


To the Syntax of Things

by suntipped



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Homophobia, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suntipped/pseuds/suntipped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can’t mean what Merlin thinks he means—right? It’s just Merlin’s imagination running away with him, too many nerves this morning, a lack of sleep, the disorientation of being in such an unfamiliar place, or something, that’s it. Merlin edges slightly, subtly back toward the door, but the boy sees his movement and grins even wider like it’s some secret joke, laughs, “Oh, relax,” and strolls forward to easily follow his steps, lingering even closer than before. “I’m not some deranged lunatic,” the boy says, but the very lascivious gleam in his eye ruins it by definitely, definitely claiming otherwise. </p><p>(For the KMM prompt: <i>Arthur/Merlin, first kiss in the toilet of the school. Denial as usual.</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Syntax of Things

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://community.livejournal.com/kinkme_merlin/13287.html?thread=11615975#t11615975). Thanks to everyone at the meme for the wonderful feedback! Title is a [poem](http://i497.photobucket.com/albums/rr334/stopstory/sincefeelingisfirst.png) by e.e. cummings.

  
Merlin doesn’t know how he gets here—honestly, he doesn’t; all he knows is that his new school is huge and kind of scary, and that he already misses the small town where he lived for most of his life, everybody so close there, familiar, all the faces open and friendly, so unlike in this new foreign place, where he knows nobody at all. He’s stumbling around the campus in the morning searching for his second class of the day, unused to the towering grey-walled buildings and teeming hordes of students, the layout of the classrooms seemingly haphazard, Building A connected to Building F and separating B from K in a completely nonsensical way, and just when he thinks he’s found the right chemistry classroom, somehow, it turns out to be a toilet. 

He walks up to the grime-tinted row of mirrors lining one wall over waist-high sinks and grimaces at his reflection, pale and awkward-looking in the red jacket and white button-down, the standard school uniform. He looks about as uncomfortable as he feels, out of place in this foreign city, this entirely different world. 

“You’re new,” says a voice from behind him, and Merlin lets out a startled, rather high-pitched yelp that he quickly tries to pass off as a bad cough, whirling around to see a boy lounging on the floor, squeezed in the tiny two-foot space between the last stall and the tiled wall with the high windows, hidden from the angle of the door. Light streams in from above, catching slightly on the hair at the top of his head and turning it almost golden.

“Er,” Merlin says, feeling unsure, fiddling with a shirt sleeve.

“ _Really_ new,” the boy says, getting lazily to his feet now and stretching. Merlin tries not to stare at the bright skin of his collarbone, where his shirt is casually unbuttoned, collar messily wrinkled around a loosely-knotted tie. “You aren’t even from around London, are you?”

“No,” Merlin says, feeling a slight sad tug at his chest at the thought of it, of Ealdor with its quaint green valleys and surrounding mountains, so different from glass-built office towers and streets dizzy with traffic, cars stretching one endless line on a mad criss-cross of roads. “I’m—I just moved here, in the city, to live with my uncle.”

“You were in my English class this morning,” the boy tells him, coming across the bathroom to lean against the row of sinks now, head tilted, curious. 

Merlin flushes. “Was I?”

“I was watching you,” the boy says, shameless, completely blunt and straightforward, and he leans a little bit closer, with one eyebrow raised and a lopsided smile playing at the corner of his mouth; Merlin’s breath catches a little bit, unconsciously.

“I don’t even know your name,” Merlin blurts, wildly, searching for _anything_ to say.

The boy flashes him a grin, wide and easy. “Arthur.”

“I’m—“

“Merlin, yeah,” Arthur waves his hand through the air. “I know.”

The blush on Merlin’s cheekbones creeps farther, until he’s certain his entire face is a splotchy pink. He doesn’t dare turn to face the mirrors, to check. “Um,” he says, eloquently. “What are you doing in the bathroom? I mean—don’t you have a class?”

Arthur shrugs, “Didn’t really feel like going,” all casual, like he does this all the time, and lounges against an elbow propped up on the porcelain of the sink, one hand coming up to scratch at the side of his neck. “Was kind of hoping for something more _interesting_ to do, you know what I mean?”

Merlin has no idea what Arthur means, but then Arthur leans close and gives Merlin a _look_ , disheveled hair and eyelashes long and golden, a smirk that stops just short of being a full-on leer—and it’s like the room is suddenly way too quiet, and Merlin thinks, heart pounding madly in his throat, _oh_.

He can’t actually—

He can’t mean what Merlin _thinks_ he means—right? It’s just Merlin’s imagination running away with him, too many nerves this morning, a lack of sleep, the disorientation of being in such an unfamiliar place, or something, that’s it. Merlin edges slightly, subtly back toward the door, but the boy sees his movement and grins even wider like it’s some secret joke, laughs, “Oh, re _lax_ ,” and strolls forward to easily follow his steps, lingering even closer than before. 

“I’m not some deranged lunatic,” the boy says, but the very lascivious gleam in his eye ruins it by definitely, definitely silently claiming otherwise.

 _No, you most positively are._ Merlin reaches for his most polite, most neutral tone of voice, clears his throat. “Look, um, I kind of have to get to class, do you know which direction Room 321—?”

What happens next is not his fault, at all, and honestly, _honestly_ , Merlin has no idea how he gets here, except that he does; one minute he’s just a lost boy in a new school looking for a class, and the next he’s being shoved up against a cold-smooth tiled bathroom wall by an obviously crazy person with no regard for the concept of personal space whatsoever.

Without warning, Arthur puts a hand at the back of Merlin’s neck (a steady, firm pressure, certain and secure) and pulls him in, kisses him on the mouth frank and unabashed like he does _this_ all the time too, meets random basically-strangers in bathrooms and _sticks his tongue down their throats_ after not even three minutes of conversation, on a regular schedule. He mashes his mouth against Merlin’s, not rough but not quite gentle, either; unrelenting. Merlin is reeling with the momentary shock of it, his lips frozen, and then Arthur bites at his lower lip, so very insistent, so Merlin opens just slightly, obligingly, almost quivering from the heat radiating from Arthur’s hand and face and _body_ , so close to Merlin’s own. 

Arthur pauses thoughtfully, turns his head to drag Merlin’s lip down, scrape teeth over his jawbone, whispering, “I have no idea,” –opens wider to bite at Merlin’s chin—“where Room 321 is,”—but at this point Merlin’s forgotten that he even has a class at all, because Arthur’s hands are all over him now, carding through his hair—“sorry,”—unbuttoning the stiff red jacket, pulling at the hem of his shirt, smirking against Merlin’s cheek.

“ _Uh_ ,” is all he’s coherent enough to say. 

Smiling like an actual madman now, the boy runs his fingers smoothly down Merlin’s waist, settling on his hips. He darts out his tongue to wet his lips, runs it across the bottom one in an almost obscene way, making his mouth shiny and red and just slightly swollen. “You know,” he sighs, suddenly sullen, “this kind of thing is a lot more fun if the other person actually _reciprocates_.” 

An easy objection and a not-so-witty report both form in the back of Merlin’s throat, but before he can scramble his thoughts into any kind of logical sequence or even so much as say _you are legitimately insane, please, please just let me go and I promise I won’t tell anyone, you don’t even have to kill me_ , Arthur seems to see his open mouth as a kind of opportunity, and takes the split second to press forward again, latch his mouth onto Merlin’s and barrage his way past Merlin’s teeth, lick the soft inside, skim his tongue wetly over the ridges on the palate on his upper jaw.

Merlin _moans_ in the most embarrassing of ways, the sound echoing hollowly around the tiles of the bathroom. But he doesn’t even have time to feel mortified by it because now Arthur’s entire upper body is pressed against his, hard muscles of his chest digging into Merlin’s ribs, arms pinning his own flat against the wall, nimble hands running everywhere, and when he disentangles his mouth for a second to suck on the sensitive skin of Merlin’s collarbone, Merlin can see, above Arthur’s head in the wall-spanned mirrors, a full view of himself—mouth open, face flushed deep red, shirt and tie askew and looking thoroughly, shamefully debauched—and he gasps, involuntarily.

Arthur says, sounding pleased, “That’s more like it,” and goes back to attacking his clavicle, where a dark bruise will no doubt emerge, hours after this.

He bites down on the bone suddenly, then follows up the sharp sting of it by swiping his tongue languidly, almost apologetically, over the raw and newly broken skin, one hand coming up to trail across the red-bitten area.

“So you’re kind of,” Merlin finally manages to choke out, staring down at the assault his neck, and Arthur lifts his head enough to ask, “Awesome?”

“No—I was going to say _insane_ , actually,” Merlin frowns. 

“Oh, well,” Arthur gives a sort of half-hearted shrug, “sure. Probably, yeah. But you’re not exactly complaining, are you?” He focuses his attention on Merlin’s neck once more, grinning, long delicate eyelashes fanning shadows across his cheeks, glinting almost white from the sun every time he blinks.

Merlin lets out a tiny laugh that just borders on hysterical, then swallows it immediately in his throat as Arthur reaches up his other hand, fingers splaying on Merlin’s cheekbone (soft but calloused, the touch of them soothing, somehow), then dragging slowly down the length of his neck to tug at the top of his shirt, fiddle with the collar curiously, inquiringly. This time he leans forward very, very slowly, as if giving Merlin time to back away—which, even if he didn’t have a wall pressed behind his back and a body practically caging him in a corner, he probably couldn’t, just from how mesmerizing the sight of Arthur’s stupid loony _smile_ is, fuck—before pressing his lips, again, against Merlin’s, tasting and exploring and, one way or another, conquering. 

He feels Arthur’s smile against his mouth when Merlin opens hesitantly, granting full access to the inside again. Arthur hums approvingly into his mouth, whispers, “So, maybe you’re kind of insane, too,” and a slow trickle of _something_ unravels in Merlin’s chest, curiously akin to the feeling of falling, the swooping sensation of accidentally missing a step down the stairs, momentary panic stuttering his breathing pattern.

He’s just now getting into the kiss, gathering the courage to press back harder, more demanding, maybe lick open Arthur’s mouth and puzzle out the taste of it—when the metal click of the bathroom door sounds, loud in the silence, jerking them both apart so fast it’s almost surreal.

Stupidly, pointlessly, he darts a hand up to cover his mouth, rub at his jaw.

The boy, a short red-headed kid, just walks in and heads toward the stall nearest to the door, barely sparing Arthur and Merlin in the corner a half-second glance (how can he not see it? Merlin wonders with his heart hammering in his throat; he knows what he must look like right now, doesn’t even need the mirrors to be able to describe the exact crimson shade of his blush, and then there’s the obvious tell-tale sprawling, blotchy _mark_ on his neck). 

As soon as he hears the stall lock, Merlin turns and snatches up his book bag from the floor (when had he dropped that there?), trying to will his fingers to stop trembling and his heart to stop pounding insistently in his eardrums like it’s trying to leap right out of his body. When he turns back, Arthur is leaning against a sink again, wiping his mouth delicately with the back of one hand and staring at Merlin with a strange, unreadable expression.

“I,” Merlin stutters, has to clear his throat. He keeps his voice even. “I’m really late for class.”

“Yeah,” Arthur agrees.

“I’m gonna go, I guess—“ Fuck, he can’t even remember what _building_ he’s in right now, let alone where he’s supposed to be. Most of his brain cells seem to have died off of their own accord in the last fifteen minutes, actually. “So, uh. Bye.”

“Bye,” Arthur echoes, voice completely neutral. 

Merlin doesn’t even look back as he scrambles out of the bathroom and down the hall, screeching to a stop only when he’s fully out of there, standing in the empty courtyard, staring at a tree with the memory of Arthur’s tongue still on the inside of his cheek, hot and wet.

He finds his class. Eventually. Stumbles into it a complete half-hour late, stammering an apology about schedule issues. The teacher seats him at the back of the room, and Merlin spends the rest of the lesson not paying attention and trying to adjust his jacket over the purple bruises on his neck. 

 

\--

 

The morning of the next day at school, Merlin sits early in the corner of his English class and rubs the sleepy redness out of his eyes, trying to act like he hasn’t stayed up all night, staring at the patterns on the ceiling and recounting Arthur’s—and he doesn’t even know this boy’s last _name_ , or anything about him other than the fact that he attacks unsuspecting strangers in school bathrooms, and it’s so utterly ridiculous, but he’s got the memory of his lips locked in his brain now like a curse—fingers on his neck, over and over.

His stomach skitters across the floor every time someone walks through the door. Slowly, students drift into the room in groups, laughing and chattering, taking seats. But none of them are Arthur.

“Merlin, is it?”

Merlin turns, surprised, at the voice—a pretty, dark-haired girl with very pale skin is sitting in the desk behind him, smiling kindly.

“I’m Freya,” she says, stretching a small hand towards him. “You just started here yesterday, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, shaking her hand, returning her smile gratefully. “I’m from Ealdor; it’s this tiny town hours away from here on the edge of the country, nobody’s ever heard of it, but it’s so _different_ to be here, in a big city, I mean, without mountains or rivers and everybody knowing each other—“ He stops awkwardly, suddenly aware that he’s somewhat rambling.

Freya doesn’t look like she minds at all. “That sounds wonderful,” she sighs, wistful. “I used to live in a small town, too, and I can’t even _tell_ you how weird it was to get used to all these trains and people and buildings everywhere.”

“Yeah, isn’t it?” Merlin laughs, turning fully around to face her. “Guess I’ll have to start adjusting.”

“This school was really intimidating to me when I first started,” Freya confesses. Merlin feels a tiny spark of happiness inside his chest, at the thought of maybe having found one other person who feels just as out of place, unfamiliar, here.

They strike up an easy conversation, talking about how much they miss the countryside and the farm that Freya grew up on with her parents, when the bell rings—students hovering around the doorway take their seats, and a couple more dart in, out of breath. 

Arthur skitters into the room at the very last second, alone, hair tousled but looking just as self-assured as ever, bag slung casually over one shoulder. He flicks his eyes over the classroom, taking a desk at the very back of the room. 

Merlin ducks his head quickly down and barely represses the urge to fidget in his seat. 

Their teacher’s doing some kind of presentation on the various forms of sentence structure today, lights in the room dimmed as he pulls up a slide on a projector and talks on and on about the errors of comma splices and fragmented clauses, things Merlin doesn’t particularly care about or find useful to his life in any way, so he doesn’t feel guilty at all about tuning out and letting his mind drift to more interesting things (which is anything but this, really). He turns his head back to roll his eyes jokingly at Freya, convey his complete boredom with this—and sees Arthur, who is lounging with his legs spread wide under his desk at the back of the room in semi-darkness, blatantly _staring at him._

Merlin flushes and snaps his head so fast it almost hurts.

Seconds later, he feels a tap on his shoulder. “Something the matter?” Freya whisper-asks at his ear, leaning forward.

“No,” he whispers back. And then, because it really can’t hurt any to ask, “Just—what do you know. About, uh. Arthur, back there?”

“Arthur?” Freya asks. “Arthur Pendragon, Arthur? You met him?”

“Sure.”

“Just the usual—you know, he’s really rich, father owns half of England, something like that. And he’s bloody gorgeous, of course,” Freya adds with a quiet laugh, “but taken.”

“Taken?” Merlin asks, tentative.

“Yeah, and it’s a shame, seeing as how he’s got half the school falling at his feet,” Freya says, and points subtly to a girl on the other side of the room with long, dark hair and dark eyes. Merlin follows her direction. “That’s Morgana, his girlfriend.”

Merlin says, “Oh, I see,” casual and agreeable, and leaves it at that, ignoring the sudden, strange feelings of annoyance and anger unfurling in his chest. 

He doesn’t look back for the rest of the class, but he can _feel_ Arthur’s eyes on him: a slow burn, daring and intense; a clear taunt, a provocation, for whatever reason— _crazy crazy crazy, this kid_ , Merlin reminds himself, _crazy people do not need a reason to be crazy_ —and he is very proud of himself for resisting it. 

The bell rings to signal the end of the period, and the lights are flicked back on. 

Merlin leaves the classroom without once looking in Arthur’s direction, accepts Freya’s offer to sit with her and her friends at lunch, and walks directly to his next class (Building L, second floor, room in the top north corner—he thinks he’s getting the hang of the layout now, sort of, thank god). Arthur is not in yesterday’s bathroom again. Merlin knows because, in spite of his pride and his self-respect and all of his steely resolve, he ducks in there for just a second, on the way, to check. And promptly feels silly and ashamed of himself.

Arthur isn’t in any of his classes after English. Merlin just barely sits through chemistry without falling asleep with his head on his desk, then treks downstairs to two other morning classes, and then heads down to the courtyard for lunch, all the while determinedly not letting his mind wander, definitely not thinking about messy blonde hair or a lopsided grin or bright, bright skin glowing in the soft afternoon light, smooth against his neck—

“Merlin,” Freya is saying, sliding over on the bench to make room at their table. “This is Gwen,” she points to a curly-headed girl with a flower tucked behind her ear, “and Lancelot,” a tall, handsome boy with kind eyes, “and Vivian,” a short, delicate-looking girl, pale hair almost colorless and falling around her face in curls, “and last but not least, Will,” a ruddy-faced boy who raises two fingers in salute to Merlin, grinning. 

“Hi,” Merlin tells them, taking a seat between Freya and the girl named Gwen. “It’s really nice to meet all of you.”

“Likewise,” Gwen smiles at him, open and friendly. Merlin takes a liking to her already.

Will leans forward, resting his chin on a hand. He peers across the table seriously. “What do you know about the Montauk Project, Merlin? Lancelot and I were just discussing the very real possibility of a parallel dimension. Do _you_ believe in a multiverse?”

“I—what?” Merlin asks, disconcerted. 

“Uh, okay, don’t mind him,” Freya says quickly, as Vivian rolls her eyes, snorting in a most unladylike way. “Will’s sort of a huge science geek—“ at which point Will tries to throw a carrot at her head, which she dodges expertly, “and he’s got all of these conspiracy theories that he likes to talk about with anyone he meets. Seriously, don’t mind him.”

“We’re really quite normal,” Gwen tells him earnestly, while Will tosses another carrot, this one hitting Vivian on the ear by accident. She glares, picking up a sandwich and proceeding to launch breadcrumbs viciously at Will’s nose.

“We’re mostly quite normal,” Gwen concedes.

Merlin is watching the food fight with mild amusement, smiling in spite of himself, when he feels the steady itch of somebody’s gaze at the side of his neck. Turning just slightly, he sees Arthur walking across the courtyard from a hall, alone, a book tucked under his arm, and—there it is, _looking_ at him again in that way that he’s got no right to, bold and intense and completely unabashed. A pleased smile creeps to Arthur’s lips when he sees Merlin looking back; he slows when passing within fifteen feet of their table and gives the tiniest jerk of his head to the building to their right, then turns to head in that direction.

Heart thumping loudly, Merlin excuses himself from the table, mumbling something about going to get some water. Nobody in the vicinity of the tables is paying any attention, and he makes for the entrance of the building calmly, on forcefully steady legs. Merlin stops just short of reaching for the door handle, hesitating for a minute ( _crazy, crazy, crazy_ , his brain chants in reminder), and then thinks, well, _what the hell_ and pushes the door open into the long, dimly lit corridor, completely empty of students or teachers at lunchtime.

Arthur’s waiting for him, leaning up against a wall, head tilted to the side. “Finally,” he drawls. “Took you long enough.”

Merlin swallows. “Hey.”

They stare at each other like that for a while, a muffled _tick-tock_ of a clock audible from an open classroom somewhere close, until Arthur finally sighs, loud and exasperated, and mutters, “God, do I really have to do fucking _everything_ for myself?” and drops his book to the ground with a loud thud, stepping forward in one fluid movement towards Merlin, completely without warning, to crush his mouth against Merlin’s. He tastes of orange juice and, curiously, almonds.

“Mmmf—!“

“Mmmf,” Arthur agrees, suddenly very amiable now with his teeth latched onto Merlin’s upper lip.

“But—“

“Hush,” Arthur tells him, sucking the skin of Merlin’s lip into his mouth like there’s nothing he wants to do more in the entire world, like it’s all that’s keeping him alive.

“ _Seriously_ , Arthur—“

The boy pulls back, looking extremely irritated. “What?” he snaps, breath coming in warm puffs against Merlin’s face.

Arthur is really a sight to behold, Merlin thinks dizzily, and especially fascinating right now, with his hair mussed, eyebrows drawn, two red points of color blossoming high on his cheeks. He tries to focus on something else. Anything else. “Uh, you, you kind of. This doesn’t really, you know, we don’t really, this is, it’s not. Making sense. What with your. And stuff.”

“What.”

“Arthur, you—you have a _girlfriend_ ,” Merlin hisses finally, having regained the ability to think straight. “Do you _know_ that?”

Arthur just blinks, looking, if anything, bemused. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

Staring at him in disbelief, Merlin repeats, slowly, “You. Have a. Girlfriend,” and tries uselessly to think of some way to communicate his point to this boy, who clearly is lacking certain essential things in his genetic coding—the necessary DNA for rational judgment and _sanity_ , for instance. 

“Her name is Morgana,” Arthur says, still frowning. “And she’s nice, yeah.”

“God, you can’t be serious,” Merlin says, incredulously. “Do you want me to spell this out for you? People with _girlfriends_ , Arthur, people like yourself, they do not go and randomly _snog_ other people, particularly _complete strangers_ , particularly _boys_ , in public toilets. They just _don’t_.”

“Why not?” Arthur wants to know.

Merlin grinds his teeth together.

“Okay, you know what?” he speaks up after a beat. “You know what? You’re pretty much an actual crazy person, yeah? Like, mad. Like, hospitalization-worthy insane. So I’m going to go now, and you can just go and. Well. I don’t know. Assault some more unsuspecting people. Whatever you do.”

He makes it about three full feet away when a hand reaches out to grab the back of his jacket, reel him in and push him right against the door, the metal hinge digging into his back painfully.

Arthur’s eyes are flashing but when he opens his mouth to speak, it is quiet, almost uncertain. “What if I don’t want you to go just yet?”

And, well, _fuck._

It’s really just easier to give in, in the end, if Merlin is honest with himself. The decent thing would be to pry himself out of Arthur’s grasp, politely bid goodbye, and maybe find a way to transfer to a school all the way across town, one without so many lovely, blonde-haired crazies, or _something_. That would be the morally correct thing to do. But Merlin has never claimed to be perfect.

He lets Arthur lean up close, tuck his nose into the bend of Merlin’s neck and _lick_ his way up—lets him touch his red, red lips to Merlin’s, fingers coming up to grasp at his hair—lets him roam inside Merlin’s mouth, an exploration.

Merlin lets Arthur pin him against the door and shove his tongue inside, bossy and arrogant, already certain that Merlin won’t refuse him—and he doesn’t, that’s the thing. Merlin _doesn’t_ refuse Arthur. Not when his hands tighten their grip on his hair; not when he leans, leans, leans in as far as he can possibly go without hurling them both backward through the door, body pressed into all the dipping, curling ridges of Merlin’s; not when he kisses Merlin so wetly and so thoroughly, taking his sweet time, opening up his mouth by degrees, by tiny increments; not when he (oh, god) _moans_ against Merlin, the sound vibrating through his neck, pressed up right against Merlin’s Adam’s apple. 

“What are you playing at,” Merlin wants to know, gasps it into Arthur’s soft golden hair when he gets a chance to breathe, wheezing for air, lips so close to the other boy’s ear. “Why—why are you even _doing_ this, Arthur? You don’t even _know_ me, you know. You don’t know anything about me.”

Arthur shrugs slowly, resting his chin on the knob of Merlin’s shoulder; Merlin feels the shift of his muscles, strong and flexible, against his own, underneath his shirt. “Yeah, but,” he whispers, staring sideways at Merlin’s mouth, and _shit_ , that’s distracting, “You don’t know me, either.”

His heart skips a beat. Stupid, stupid thing. So very irrational. “I know you’ve got some kind of serious mental affliction,” Merlin reminds him an off-beat too late.

A smile glinting at his lips, Arthur hums, tilts in even closer (if it’s even possible) until the weight of him is a steady force on Merlin’s ribs, constricting his breath. “You really think that, do you?”

Merlin shifts, uncomfortable under Arthur’s scrutiny. And he feels something hard and hot pressed into his thigh—okay, fuck, is that—and Arthur moves, too, just barely—and yeah, _it is_. 

He feels his face heat up. “I do think that,” he manages to say without stuttering.

“But I’m just as sane as anybody else,” Arthur tells him, insists, pressing a quick kiss to the underside of his jawbone. He takes Merlin’s hand in his, warm and large and slightly sweaty, and cocks his eyebrow. “Believe me.”

“Believe you,” Merlin repeats, skeptical. 

“Yeah,” Arthur nods, smiling again, showing a full row of bright teeth. 

“Be _lieve_ you.”

“Merlin,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes melodramatically and releasing Merlin’s hand in favor of grabbing his head as an anchor to launch another attack his mouth again, swift and abrupt, pulling away only when they need to break apart for oxygen. “Merlin, Merlin, _Merlin_.”

“Yes, _Arth_ ur?” Merlin aims for sarcastic, but the effect is somewhat ruined by his breathlessness.

“I like you, Merlin,” Arthur says suddenly.

“What?”

“I _like_ you. God knows why. You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” Arthur says, catching his teeth on his lip until the skin there almost breaks, and then running a smooth tongue over it slowly, almost unconsciously. His grin slips from sly to serious to cocky and back in a matter of seconds, leaving Merlin silent and blinking in confusion. “Keep it between us two,” he whispers conspiratorially, crooking a finger into the front pocket of Merlin’s trousers. “You won’t tell anyone, right? ’Cause this is just, you know. Just for fun, yeah—?”

Merlin doesn’t get a chance to respond. The door to a classroom down the hall swings open, startling them both; Arthur backs off of Merlin, who scoots quickly away from him. Footsteps begin to clack in the hall, getting gradually louder, obviously headed in their direction, and Merlin feels panic rise up in his chest, but also overwhelming relief. 

_Sorry_ , he mouths at Arthur, _got to go_ —obviously—and moves to leave the corridor, trying to be as quiet as possible.

The cool of the air outside is good for him, calming his racing heartbeat and restoring what’s left of his good sense, and he breathes it in deeply, feeling it slow the mad thrumming in his veins.

Arthur catches up with him right outside the building, stopping him with an arm flung out in front of Merlin’s chest. He says, “So you’ll—“

“I’ll see you around,” Merlin cuts him off, veering around his arm to continue walking through the grass, studiously avoiding both Arthur’s gaze and the pitiable mess boiling in his lower stomach, shame and self-doubt and aggravation for succumbing to this in the first place, _again._

Arthur seems to see something in his face that pleases him, though. “Yeah,” he says slowly, keeping eyes trained levelly on Merlin’s, walking backwards with him for a few steps before finally stopping. “You _will_ , Merlin,” so confident, always a statement and never a question, and leaves him with the smallest flash of a smirk, turning away to stride abruptly away in the opposite direction.

Merlin doesn’t stand there dumbly, fingers pressed silently against his mouth and watching until Arthur’s figure disappears around a corner. He _doesn’t_. 

 

\--

 

“How was your second day of school?” Gaius asks him, smiling when Merlin walks through the front door. “I’ve hardly gotten to talk to you at all the past two days, Merlin. Have you made any new friends in the place?”

Merlin stops, thinks about it.

(Gwen had stared at him for a minute curiously when he’d walked back to their table at lunch, finally, perhaps still looking slightly dazed, and asked him why it took so long for him to “get water”—oh, he’d just gotten lost, he explained, it was no big deal. He listened politely to Vivian and Freya tell him about all the different paths to drinking fountains around the school, and promptly forgot them all a minute later. Then later, Will had bluntly asked him why his mouth was red and puffy like he’d been _snogging in the toilet_ or something, and it took every ounce of Merlin’s self-control not to choke on his salad, dangerously stabbing himself in the cheek with his fork on accident. Lancelot patted him on the back, told him to be more careful with his eating utensils, he’d once known a kid who took out his own eye with a chopstick and had to go to the hospital to get the wooden splinters out of it.)

(And then there is Arthur, who is kind of special and kind of unhinged and kind of devastatingly perfect in a way that Merlin never used to believe existed outside of trashy romance novels, which of course he has never read while bored on a three-hour train ride to London, or anything of the sort.)

(Arthur is his own category; Arthur is his own story and his own sort-of secret, and something about the thrill of it makes Merlin inexplicably happy to be here in this city, playing this strange and unpredictable game he knows nothing about; and he thinks because of it, he might actually miss Ealdor just a little bit less—the sadness of leaving his home made a little more bearable by the odd delight of something new, of this, of Arthur’s mouth pressed to the inside of his jaw, wrong and nonsensical but so, so wonderful.)

“Not really,” Merlin says, and shrugs.

 

\--

 

The third day of school starts off, fairly uneventful. Classes are okay; Merlin, looking up from doodling random nothings in the back of his notebook, realizes he actually has Lancelot in one of his morning periods, and Gwen in another—they sit together, then at lunch they join the rest of Freya’s friends at what Merlin quickly begins to refer to as their usual table, tucked in a grassy section of the courtyard. Will launches into a some sort of excited speech about a television program last night centering on UFOs (“Seriously, ignore him; or just make it really obvious you’re not paying attention, and he _will_ stop, eventually,” Freya murmurs) and then Vivian begins regaling the group with some of the most recent gossip going around the school, who-got-what-girl-pregnant-this-month and which-female-teacher-actually-used-to-be-a-man, and the like. 

Merlin’s admittedly not paying much attention, chewing absentmindedly on his sandwich, when he hears Vivian say in a dramatic voice, “—and rumor has it, Morgana’s broken it off with Arthur Pendragon _again_ —“

“They break up every other week, though,” Freya counters, sighing. “If only they’d _stay_ that way, the rest of us might have a chance. . .”

“Yeah, like that’ll _ever_ happen,” Vivian tells her with a tiny quirk of her lips. “Even if she’s left him forever—Arthur’s never interested in _anybody_ , I’m telling you. I’ve been in school with him for years. He’s always polite, of course, always _nice_ when girls ask, but doesn’t so much as look twice at any of them. It’s like the boy is completely untouchable.”

“Such a pity,” Freya says, wistful. 

Merlin feels something involuntarily lurch inside his chest. He quickly takes a large gulp of water to swallow it down, and then promptly chokes on it while also trying accidentally to inhale. Will has to lean over and thump him vigorously on the back a couple times. When he recovers enough to tune back into the conversation, Vivian’s already moved on to talking about some boy in her maths class who was arrested for dealing drugs out of his basement. And Merlin _isn’t_ going to ask about Arthur; he doesn’t _care_ enough to ask, for god’s sake. It’s not like they’re close. It’s not like they’re friends. It’s not like they’re even _acquaintances_.

It’s not like he wants to know.

Later, hours later, after school, after saying goodbye to Freya and her friends in front of the gates—

Merlin is walking back to Gaius’s, thinking about his new school (and not thinking about Arthur) and thinking about Ealdor (and not thinking about Arthur) and thinking about probably writing a letter to his mother, whom he misses with all his heart (and not thinking of thinking of Arthur, at all)—so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice the slick, shiny red sports car that pulls gently to a stop next to him on the sidewalk, and then jumps about a mile into the air when the driver beeps the horn, loud.

“Hello,” Arthur says, smiling from behind dark sunglasses and a rolled-down window. 

“Hi,” Merlin says back uncertainly. He flicks a gaze over at the four stopped cars lined up behind Arthur’s on the single-lane road.

“Want a ride?”

“I’m just—I live just around the corner, thanks,” Merlin tells him. 

“Want a ride anyway?”

Three of the cars behind Arthur’s have started honking impatiently, trying to get him to move out of the way already. Arthur looks undaunted. His fingers drum the steering wheel gently, loose and relaxed, as he turns to look expectantly at Merlin.

A minute passes. One of the drivers behind them actually opens his door and steps out onto the street to yell something at Arthur, who looks supremely unbothered. “Are you coming or not?”

So Merlin gets in the car. 

Arthur turns a corner, makes a small, sudden arc around, and then begins to drive in entirely the opposite direction from Gaius’s place.

“What—“ Merlin starts, having clearly _just_ pointed out his address. And, a beat later, “What the hell, Arthur. Where are you taking me?” 

“Thought we’d go for a drive,” Arthur replies, easy.

“I don’t want to _go for a drive_ ,” Merlin says immediately. “Does—God, does this legally count as a kidnapping? Seriously, can you just let me out of the car?” He tugs at the lock on the door.

In response, Arthur deliberately speeds up.

Merlin tries to reason with him, at first. His plan of action is to be calm and completely collected. Yes. He starts off by simply saying, “Arthur,” in a very sensible voice, and, a couple minutes later, “ _Arthur_ ,” again, louder, and then, “I really would like to go _home_ , please,” even though Arthur pretends to not hear it by pressing some button for the stereo and blasting incredibly obnoxious dance music through the speakers for five minutes straight, a steady beat’s _thump-thump-thump_ rattling around in Merlin’s skull and possibly damaging his eardrums for life. Merlin finally yells over it, “Okay, really? Really. You can’t be serious,” and reaches to turn it down, and then Arthur actually tries to _swat his hand away_ like it’s an irritating fly, so Merlin scowls and makes a split-second, somewhat ill-advised decision to shove Arthur in the shoulder, which, surprise of surprises, jolts the car to swerve in a rather dangerous way—pedestrians quickly scooting out of the way with yells of fright as one of the front wheels bumps roughly up onto the sidewalk and then back again. 

Arthur turns the music down to a barely tolerable roar, just enough to growl over it, “Merlin, do you _know_ how expensive this car is—“

“So maybe you shouldn’t use it to _take people hostage_ —”

“Don’t be overdramatic—“

“You’re the one who just abducted me off the street!”

Abruptly, Arthur veers at a sharp right angle into the near-empty car park of a small, abandoned shopping center and kills the engine. The car dips into sudden silence. Merlin’s ears are ringing.

He sneaks a bemused glance over at Arthur, after a few seconds; the sunglasses cover most of his face, but the profile of his lips is tucked in a small, barely discernible frown. He turns, catches Merlin looking. And is oddly quiet, for once.

“So,” Merlin tries, just for something to break the silence, “you’ve got me cornered and defenseless now. Is this the part where you chop me up with a chainsaw and throw the pieces into a garbage bin?”

“You’re hilarious,” Arthur says dryly.

“Yeah, I know.”

Arthur tilts his head to rest against the leather seat, still turned to look at Merlin, expression hidden by the glasses. 

Merlin stares back.

It occurs to him that he has never been quite so alone with Arthur. They’re not at school anymore, but parked in the middle of an empty lot, blocks away—it doesn’t matter who sees, here. There are no teachers, no other students; nobody to walk in on them. (And if his heart stutters a little bit at that, if it seizes slightly at the thought, Merlin pretends that it’s out of fear there are no passers-by to act as witnesses in case Arthur actually does try and kill him, psychopath that he probably is—it _isn’t_ because he’s thinking of Arthur’s lips, of Arthur’s fingers, of all the things they could get up to in this car, behind this empty building, nobody else around—)

Arthur’s phone goes off. He fishes it out of the left pocket of his trousers, gives the name flashing on the screen an unreadable look, and throws it carelessly under the seat.

Merlin wants to ask, but he has enough self-restraint not to. From what he’d heard from Vivian at lunch today, he has a pretty good idea anyway.

“Where were we?” Arthur murmurs now.

“Nowhere,” Merlin answers, meaning their surroundings, but Arthur seems to take it a bit differently.

“Well, that can be easily remedied,” he says, reaching up to rest an arm on the back of Merlin’s seat. Smiles, small and maybe a little more strained than usual, but lovely all the same. He moves his other hand to the lapel of Merlin’s jacket, tracing the seams, and then slipping his fingers down the silk of Merlin’s tie, following it down until his hand is right at Merlin’s lower stomach, where it comes to rest, press gently down. Intention clear and obvious.

Merlin doesn’t mean to shudder, but he does. He ends up doing a lot of involuntary things in close proximity to Arthur, actually.

“You were ignoring me in English today.”

“No, I wasn’t,” is Merlin’s automatic response, even though he absolutely was. He’d gotten through the entire period without once looking toward the back of the class, and had felt a very justified sense of personal triumph upon leaving the room.

“ _Liar_.”

“Why do you even—why do you care? It’s not like you actually talk to me in that class, anyway.”

“Maybe _talking_ ’s not really what I’d had in mind,” Arthur replies, looking up at Merlin with his chin tucked down and mouth slightly open in a way that should theoretically be very girly or moronic or cliché, or perhaps a combination of the three, but not seductive and brain-melting and suggestive of very, very lewd things. And yet.

“You’re kidding,” Merlin laughs, breathless and disbelieving. “You really are. Like you’d ever actually be doing _this_ to me, in the middle of—in front of everyone. Like you’d dare.” He looks pointedly down at Arthur’s straying hand, now wandering somewhere around on his right hipbone, like he’s mapping out the shape of it.

“I’m doing it now, though,” Arthur says.

“So?”

Now Arthur’s mouth is close, at his ear, breath tickling the shell of it. “So. What would you like me to do?”

“What?”

Arthur laughs, low, the sound vibrating down Merlin’s spine. “Well,” he says thoughtfully, while stealthily untucking the ends of Merlin’s shirt, “I could start off by biting your neck really, really hard, maybe leave a nice bruise for everybody to see tomorrow, whisper about who the hell the new kid could be getting it on with—“ he noses at the dip of Merlin’s collarbone to emphasize the point, the bottom edge of his sunglasses scraping into Merlin’s skin, “or we could just kiss, a lot. God, your mouth is so fucking _pretty_. Or we could get in the backseat and I could suck you off—“ 

Merlin feels his face turn red, and a sharp, sudden heat begins to unfurl in his stomach.

“Endless possibilities,” Arthur is saying, moving his hands away for a second to quickly unbuckle his seat belt, leaning in unrestrained now. His eyes are still hidden behind the dark lenses. “That last one sounds rather promising, yeah?”

“I can’t.”

“Sure, you can.”

“No,” Merlin insists, a little desperately now, and he’s proud of himself for resisting, with Arthur’s hands roaming all over his chest, under his shirt, against the skin. Arthur’s tongue lapping at the vein in his neck. “ _No_ , I—“ he has to stop and swear, because Arthur’s index finger has found its way into the top of Merlin’s pants, and is swiftly one-handedly unbuckling his belt, and damn it, how is it possible for him to be in so many places at once, “Stop. I really, really mean it. I _can’t_.”

“Clearly, as we established yesterday, you don’t know who I am,” Arthur whispers, peering with amusement at Merlin’s face. “Let me introduce myself. I’m _Arthur Pendragon_ , Merlin. People don’t say no to me. There is no such thing as ‘I can’t’.”

“I know who you are,” Merlin grits out, nearly panting. “You’re Arthur Pendragon, you’re good-looking and own a lot of expensive things and you get everything in the world handed to you on a silver platter, so—so that makes you think—this, too, you think you can just _have_ it, whatever, whenever you want, because no one can ever resist you, right?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Merlin doesn’t quite know, honestly, but Arthur’s hand has stilled underneath his shirt, waiting for him to explain, and so he goes on, fast, nearly rambling: “It’s just. What kind of game are you even playing here? I mean. You seem to like me, yeah, or at least—um, parts of me, but you take it for granted that I’ll just go along with, well. Whatever your plan is anyway. I can’t, I _won’t_ do this, because we’ve known each other for all of three not-even-full days and because also, there’s your girlfriend. Who you’re supposed to be faithful and honest to, and all that. But you break up all the time, apparently. And I bet she doesn’t even _know_ what you do with other people, behind her back—what you do with other—well, boys,” the words fumble in Merlin’s mouth, and before he can reel it in, he blurts, “Arthur, why do you keep going back to her if it’s not what you really want at all?”

He pauses to catch his breath, and looks up. 

Something in the air has changed, tensed, and he knows it immediately. Merlin knows right away that he’s had no right to say it, any of it—he _knows_ , but he _had_ to, if only to ease the mixture of guilt and confusion in his chest.

Arthur is not smiling anymore. He draws his hand slowly back from Merlin’s body, and even from behind the sunglasses, radiates a cold, calm kind of anger. Silent moments pass, and a muscle jumps in his jaw.

“I don’t care who told you that,” Arthur finally says, voice low and dangerous. “But it’s none of your fucking business.”

“I didn’t mean to—“

“And let’s get one thing straight right now. You have no idea—you have _no idea_ what I fucking want, or what my life is like—you’re only meant to be a _distraction_. That’s all. You’re a stranger. You were new and mildly interesting. Different, from all the other fucking idiots at the school. And I was _bored_ ,” Arthur tells him, in the same quiet, carefully controlled tone. “God, it gets so fucking _boring_ , sometimes. But maybe you’re just like everybody else, Merlin. Maybe all you want—” and here he breaks slightly out of that control, just a little bit, voice going sharp at the end, clenching fingers into a white-knuckled fist on his thigh. 

Merlin says, “I’m not—“ 

And Arthur only presses a finger to a small silver button on his car keys, the unlocking of the passenger door sounding with a tiny _click_. “You can get out, now.”

“I don’t even know where we are.”

“I said, you can _get out_ now, Merlin.”

So after a minute of blank staring, he does, silently, stumbling over his feet and out of the car without the faintest clue over what _just happened_. How it got from Arthur’s hand slithering underneath his shirt to Arthur unceremoniously dumping him on the street. A few seconds later, Merlin hears the starting of the engine, and he turns on the concrete, to see Arthur through the windshield pulling off his sunglasses, head bowed, and rubbing at tired, bloodshot eyes. 

It takes him the better part of an hour to make his way back home. He walks in completely the wrong way at first, becoming increasingly confused, and then after realizing his mistake, still manages to confuse street crossings until he ends up at the exact same intersection twice—and then even when he’s finally frustrated and lost enough to ask some random passerby on the sidewalk for directions and heading on the correct route, Merlin is so occupied by his terrible jumble of thoughts that he almost runs right into two lampposts and several small children, followed up by nasty glares from their parents. By the time he finally gets to the door of Gaius’s flat, his face is sweaty and his feet are sore and he’s just really, really sick of everything that’s happened today.

That night, Merlin sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning on the mattress, dreaming—of Arthur’s hot lips against his ear, right behind his neck, saying his name over and over; of Vivian’s voice floating through his head in a high, eerie pitch, whispering _completely untouchable, this boy_ ; of Arthur’s girlfriend Morgana, whom he doesn’t even know, but is just as beautiful in his imagination as she is in real life and permanently holds Arthur’s hand, long hair sweeping over Arthur’s neck, leaning into his side, kissing him on the mouth; and Arthur lets her, but has his eyes open every time, clear bright blue, always, always looking away, always, staring straight at Merlin. 

He wakes up in the morning, hard and flushed, and doesn’t remember any of it.

 

\--

 

“Freya likes you, you know.”

Merlin looks up from his maths notebook, frowning. “What?”

Thursday, officially his fourth day of school, has been so, so dreary thus far. Dark gray clouds have been poking across the sky all morning, hovering ominous and sudden, but never squeezing out any actual rain. And Merlin had assiduously ignored Arthur in English again. Not that he needed to; Arthur didn’t even so much as glance his way once, choosing instead to laugh obnoxiously and make stupid jokes with some of his friends at the back of the class, and smile excessively at Morgana (who was apparently his girlfriend, once again) in a loud, clear message to Merlin of _I’m doing just fucking fine without you, thanks_ —but it’d left Merlin more confused than ever, because what was that supposed to even _mean_ —it meant, said a small part of his mind, that Arthur felt he had something to _prove_.

“She likes you,” Gwen repeats now, several periods later, a twinkle dancing in her eye. “It’s so obvious. She talks about you all the time.”

“Oh,” Merlin says, unsure of anything else to say.

Gwen leans her head closer to Merlin’s, across the desk, so they won’t be heard. “You should ask her on a date.”

“Yeah,” Merlin agrees without thinking. “I mean, what?” 

“You don’t like anyone else, do you?” Gwen asks. “It’s just—she thinks you might have your eye on someone else, because you’ve seemed kind of distant, so she hasn’t wanted to ask.”

“Yes,” Merlin says first. And then, “No.” And then, twirling his pencil with his fingers, wildly inventing, “Actually, I—it’s sort of, uh—complicated.”

Gwen raises her eyebrows curiously like she wants to know more, but then their teacher is passing out an exam, and they have to stop their conversation for the moment. Merlin can tell she wants to bring it up again, once they’re walking out of class to the courtyard for lunch, but she’s too polite to prod him into saying anything he doesn’t voluntarily offer up, and he’s glad.

 _It’s complicated_ —why did he feel the need to say that, anyway? Freya is nice, and sweet, and very pretty. He should say no, he’s not interested in anyone else. He should ask her on a date and forget about Arthur completely.

Except.

Except Arthur leans against the wall in the corridors in the most casual of ways, shirt rumpled just so, hair ruffled by the wind, smiling with just one corner of his mouth. Except Merlin seems to see him everywhere, now that he’s not actively looking. Arthur walks past their table at lunch hand in hand with his girlfriend (he knows because Vivian says as much, remarking on it with a somewhat oblivious nosiness) every day, and is always chatting with his friends around every corner Merlin turns. His car zooms past Merlin each afternoon when he’s walking home, only a momentary flash of bright red. The school is huge, but Arthur manages to crop up in every hall. It’s maddening, but he very diligently ignores it. Until—

“Damn it,” Merlin yells, stopping two steps into the second-floor bathroom, glaring at the figure sitting atop one of the sinks. It’s two whole weeks later, and in that time, he’s managed to carefully map out sneaky ways to his classes that don’t force him to cross paths with the very person now in front of him. “ _Seriously?_ ”

Arthur lifts an eyebrow. “What?”

“Why are you _everywhere_ ,” Merlin says, exasperated. 

“Maybe you’re imagining things.”

“Maybe you’ve been following me around on purpose,” Merlin counters.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re mentally unstable,” is Merlin’s immediate response. “Because you don’t know when to give up. Because you’ve forgotten that you left me on a random street corner in the middle of nowhere. Because you have a weird stalker thing. I don’t know. Because you’re trying to _annoy_ me to death.”

Arthur cocks his head and hops down from the sink, quickly closing the distance between them. He looks serious, eyes fixed on Merlin’s. “Yeah? You think?”

“ _Yes_ , I think—”

“Thinking is overrated. I like you better when you don’t.”

Merlin’s breath comes out in a huff, loud and exaggerated. He fights down the incredible sense of déjà vu—this, here, it’s a different bathroom, in a different part of the school, but the memory of _that first time_ (which makes him wince every time he thinks of it like that, but there’s really no other way to phrase it) is still there, lurking at the back of his mind. Still bright and throbbing. Fuck it all.

“You’re back together with the girlfriend, I see,” Merlin says pointedly, as Arthur steps slowly closer, hands tucked in the pockets of his trousers. 

“Yeah, about that,” Arthur answers. He stops just an arm’s length away from Merlin, raising an eyebrow. “I was surprised. You didn’t tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

Arthur gives him a look.

“Oh. Well. No.” Merlin averts his gaze to the window just behind Arthur’s head, from which afternoon light is delicately streaming, yellow and dust-flecked, highlighting the tiny white hairs on Arthur’s cheek. “What, were you—I mean, were you _expecting_ me to?” 

“Kind of, yeah,” Arthur says.

Merlin should bristle at that—he should feel offended Arthur thinks so little of him, thinks he’s the kind of nasty person to purposely go and break up other people’s relationships—but then he can’t really summon up the strength to be indignant because Arthur’s reaching a hand out disarmingly and loping it around Merlin’s waist, reeling him in steadily as he stumbles, whispering,

“I’m glad you didn’t, though. I’m really, really glad.”

Merlin is not breathless, not at all, when Arthur’s lips brush gently against the shell of his ear.

He takes a breath and tries to say, “Please stop,” in what is supposed to be a steady, reasonable voice, but comes out just a little too soft, a little too wretched. 

Arthur probably notices it; he tucks his chin up onto the bone of Merlin’s shoulder and curls one of his fingers around Merlin’s belt loop, the gesture oddly possessive. “I’ve missed you,” he hums into Merlin’s neck. “Can’t _not_ think about you. There’s just something—there’s something about you, you know.”

“Did you really just use that line?” Merlin mutters, pulling away and grinning a little in spite of himself.

“It’s not a line,” Arthur tells him, snorting. “Well, yeah, it is, but. I’ve never used it on anyone else before.”

“Thanks. I feel so _special_.”

“Shut up.” Arthur tugs on the bottom of Merlin’s tie. “You should feel _damn_ special.”

“You’re so strange,” Merlin sighs, as he’s forced to take a faltering step towards Arthur just to avoid unbalancing. “And look, I really have to get to class. So if you could just stop looking at me all the time and touching me and showing up in unexpected places, that’d be great—“

“Boring,” Arthur interrupts, rolling his eyes. “There’s no fun whatsoever in ignoring you. It’s terribly unexciting.”

Merlin huffs. “Is this why you’re not mad at me anymore?” 

“Yeah,” Arthur admits grudgingly. “I mean, as annoying as you are when you open your mouth to talk,” —here Merlin shoots him a dark, unamused look— “I really, really like it when it’s doing, you know, other things. Your mouth, I mean.”

“Ha, ha,” Merlin tells him. 

“Skip your next class.”

“Why?”

“So I can do dirty things to you in a toilet stall,” Arthur says bluntly, with a wry little twist of his lips. His fingers slide up the fabric of Merlin’s shirt until they reach his collar, dip inside, warm and somehow familiar. “Come on, Merlin. Do it. Live a little, yeah?”

“You have a disturbingly one-track mind.” Merlin narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Can’t you ever think of anything else besides trying to get into my pants?”

“Well. No.”

And that’s that, apparently.

Arthur gives a suddenly violent tug at his shirt, and Merlin would fall forward onto his face except that Arthur’s body in front of him prevents it; he staggers into Arthur’s chest instead, and then Arthur’s arm is steadying him, and Arthur’s mouth is pressed tightly into the crook of his neck, already licking a long, wet stripe up the side. 

“Do you ever think,” Merlin grits out, as Arthur kisses his way up to his jaw and then pulls him roughly by his wrist across the room and into one of the tiny metal toilet stalls, “that you might have some sort of—I don’t know, _thing_ , for doing highly inappropriate things in public places? Do you maybe get off on the idea that _anyone could walk in—_ ”

“Do _you_ ever think you might be a little too agreeable to it?” Arthur asks back, dragging the door closed behind them with his foot—it slams with a _bang_ , loud, echoes around the room—and pinning Merlin against a wall, squeezing him in the tiny space there. “A bit too passive-aggressive, aren’t you, for someone who keeps complaining about it and never goes to _do_ anything against it. Never tries too hard to stop me.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Merlin whispers, digging his fingernails sharply into Arthur’s ribs. 

“Right,” Arthur whispers back, half-laughing into Merlin’s mouth, lips wet and curled. 

Merlin says, “Just so we’re clear—“

“Uh-huh,” as a hand reaches down to undo his belt, touch the smooth pale skin there, and Merlin takes a second to shudder appreciatively before he remembers he’s trying to say something important,

“Just so we’re clear, this doesn’t mean—this is just—“

“For fun, yeah,” Arthur finishes, repeating his own words from weeks ago. “Yes, Merlin, now can we _please_ move on from your stupid guilty conscience and get to the part where we take off our clothes?”

They don’t even get that properly done, actually. Merlin shivers at the cool air when Arthur tugs down his pants, and tries his hardest not to blush—which, of course, he does anyway, face flushing with heat, but Arthur doesn’t notice because he’s too busy staring down at Merlin’s naked skin, murmuring, “Fuck, Merlin,” and lowering himself slowly to his knees, watching Merlin all the while—watching when he takes the head of Merlin’s cock into his mouth and sucks, _hard_ (which Merlin should have expected, because he’s learned Arthur never does _anything_ halfway; Arthur has to follow everything through like it’s a matter of personal pride, every single time), until Merlin is writhing above him, gasping, trying to bite back a moan, and failing. 

It’s only about five minutes before Merlin comes, and it feels so _good_ , the white blinding flash of pleasure, that he can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed. Arthur comes _in his trousers_ , a hand pressed through the layers of fabric to the very obvious line of his erection as he swallows every last drop into his mouth, on his tongue, only pulling away when Merlin makes a noise in the back of his throat, tugs at his hair, damp and sweaty and dark.

Arthur stands shakily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand—and, god, there are streaks of Merlin’s come on the skin there, pearly white. 

“Um,” Merlin says, staring.

Arthur looks at him with a slow, wicked smile unraveling on his lips, different from all his others. More real, somehow. He unlatches the door casually, saunters out of the stall, and goes to wash his hands at the sink like it’s nothing, like they _haven’t_ just gotten off together in a toilet stall in the middle of the fucking school day. 

Merlin follows him out after pulling up his pants, awkwardly, staring at his reflection in the mirror: hair and clothes mussed, cheeks a wild red, eyes wide and blown and obvious and _yeah_ , there is no way he can go to class after this. There is _no way_.

“So, uh,” Merlin says, running shaky fingers down his shirt, when he’s regained some of the ability to think straight. “You _have_ been following me around, after all.”

“Hm,” Arthur replies, catching his eye in the mirror. 

Merlin spreads his arms wide, then drops them down hopelessly at his side. “You’ve corrupted me.”

Arthur turns around to lean into Merlin’s face, smirk into his mouth. “Good,” he whispers, and Merlin shivers from the feel of his breath alone, and—right now, right then, he knows, he just knows, there will no changing of minds, there is no turning back from here. From this point, of no return. Merlin is so, so fucked.

 

\--

 

Here is the exact extent, specifically, of the damage:

1) It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t _stop_ , and maybe some part of him had known that from the first time this crazy (albeit beautiful) boy stepped toward him as a stranger and Merlin didn’t trust his instinct to bolt right out of the toilet and cut it all off then, right there. He half-expects Arthur to lose interest now, because after all, he’s gotten what he wanted; but Arthur only seems to like this more, grinning at Merlin in the hallways and running his hands quickly along the back of Merlin’s waist when everybody else is looking the other way. Whispering things like, “Meet me under the C building stairs, later,” under the pretense of brushing lint off his shoulder, and the truly ridiculous thing is that Merlin _goes_ —only to be presented with—

2) Arthur’s vicious smile, when Merlin shows up under said stairs, dark shadows hiding them from view, as he lunges for Merlin’s shirt and bites a trail of red up his throat, fingers fisted in Merlin’s hair, groaning obscene things into Merlin’s mouth, when all the while there are _people walking up and down the stairs_ above them, innocent to anything going on below, though all it would take is one close look over the banister—

3) “So you really _do_ have a thing for kinky semi-public sex, or—or whatever this is,” Merlin accuses, panting between gasps, and Arthur presses his fingers against Merlin’s skin roughly, hard enough to bruise, and answers back,

4) “Only ever with you,”

5) And the fact that it makes something flutter tightly inside Merlin’s heart (and how he knows it; how he is past even the stage of denial now) is just shameful and very much _terrible_. He walks home after school every day furious, and vows, _swears_ to himself that it won’t happen again. One afternoon he draws up a whole litany of reasons on a crumbled piece of paper (“WHY THIS WILL DEFINITELY NOT HAPPEN AGAIN”) and they go something like this:

6) Arthur is insane. This whole situation is insane. Merlin might be insane. Merlin absolutely refuses to be somebody’s _secret lover_ , like a character in a badly-written soap opera. Arthur likes girls. Merlin should like girls, too. Arthur is dating Morgana. Arthur is in a serious, supposedly committed relationship with Morgana. This is ridiculous. This will never become more than it is. Besides, Merlin doesn’t want it to. Arthur is stupid and arrogant and obnoxious—

7) “Hey,” Arthur argues, indignant, upon snatching the paper out of Merlin’s pocket, “I am _not_ —“ and Merlin grabs for the list back, but Arthur chooses to distract him instead by shoving his tongue inside Merlin’s mouth, sliding lewd and wet. He ignores Merlin’s protests of “Shit, shit, we are _right_ in the middle of the _hallway_ ,” and then later Merlin is sitting in his last afternoon class and he finds the crumbled paper in the pocket of his trousers, ink smudged and all the words crossed out, with a penciled message on the back that Arthur somehow found time to sneak in:

8) “Obnoxious, am I? Let’s go to dinner tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up at your place.”

9) Merlin thinks it must be some sort of joke. He forgets about it until Arthur actually shows up on Friday night, smooth red car parked neatly on the street, smiling politely at Gaius who says, “Yes?” in a confused voice, and Arthur says, “I’m here to pick Merlin up for our date,” not even missing a beat. Gaius gapes slightly open-mouthed, and Merlin doesn’t want to know how furiously red his face is as he sidles through the front door, closes it behind him, and hisses at Arthur, “What the—“ but before he can finish, Arthur pulls from inside his coat a single red rose and presents it to him, hands warm.

10) It’s cliché. Truly, horribly unoriginal. Merlin wants to laugh out loud, say, _Seriously, you want to win me over with a_ flower _?_ But something in Arthur’s gaze is different tonight. More serious. So instead he just ducks his head and mumbles, “Yeah, I—fine. I guess. I’ll get my jacket.”

Yes. He’s fucked. He _knows_.

 

\--

 

Ordinary people take you to nice, average restaurants for dinner; Arthur goes for ridiculously exclusive sushi bars on the top floors of high-rise skyscraper towers, floors layered over with cold color-splashed marble, exotic plants hanging from the ceiling, menu so complicated that Merlin can’t even pronounce three-quarters of the dish names. The walls are dark coal black, interspersed with floor-to-ceiling glass panels giving a view of the colossal expanse of London, all its roads and lights mapped out below like a tiny microscopic model.

Merlin fiddles with his napkin and stares out the window, feeling more awkward and intimidated here than he’s possibly ever been in his life. 

He eats (what is it he’s eating, anyway?—some undoubtedly expensive weird-tasting fish thing with a lot of delicate spices, wrapped in flecks of seaweed and unidentifiable leaves) in mostly silence. Finally, he can’t stand it anymore, and sets his knife down on the edge of his plate with a rather loud clatter.

Arthur looks at him.

Merlin says, in as calm a voice as he can manage, “Just to clarify—“

“Yes?”

“You know that we’re not actually dating, right?”

“Mm.”

“Meaning, you know. We are not, in reality, a _couple_.” 

“Of course not,” Arthur agrees amicably, and leans back in his seat. He nudges Merlin’s jean-clad ankle with his foot, under long silk tablecloth.

Merlin purposely draws his feet back. “We are not, in any way, shape, or form, in a relationship.”

“No.”

“Okay,” Merlin says, slowly, reluctantly, afraid that Arthur doesn’t understand his point at all. “Okay, then. That’s settled.”

It’s clear, later, that Arthur _doesn’t_ understand—obvious from the way he tucks a finger into the belt loop of Merlin’s jeans when they’re making their way down to the ground in the (massive, gilded) elevator down from the restaurant, leans close, and runs a kiss down Merlin’s neck; whispers, “Wanna go to a movie or something?”

“No, I. What?” Merlin says, staring at their reflections in the glossy, flat panels of the doors, at the way Arthur fits himself into Merlin’s body like it’s natural and practiced already. “Didn’t we _just_ go over this?”

“Over what?”

“The fact that I,” Merlin says through gritted teeth, “am not your _boyfriend_.”

(And if saying this makes something shiver down his spine, spark a tiny hint of desperate maybe-possibly-just-perhaps want in his chest—he pushes it down, hard.)

“No to movies, then,” Arthur corrects himself. “All right, yeah. We can skip all of that. How about you just,” and he cocks his head to the left, assessing, and Merlin flicks a nervous glace up at the little numbered display that tells him they’re almost at their floor, and anybody, anybody could see them here so close to each other, “come back with me over to my place, then?”

He blinks stupidly, once, twice, three times. He’s still incredulous, trying to work out what to even _say_ to that when the bell dings, and the doors slide open with a smooth whoosh. Arthur pokes him in the side, steers him in the direction of the street, where his car is parked. “So? What do you say?” he says, watching Merlin.

Merlin looks at him. Really looks at him, Arthur, out of his school uniform tonight, so casually confident in _everything_ ; dark shirt and designer trousers, leaning with one foot against the wheel of his shiny sports car. Hair and teeth and perfect, chiseled bones.

“You’re Arthur Pendragon,” he says finally, repeating words back to him from weeks—four or five weeks, ago. Shit, this has been going on for more than a _month_ , this _thing_. “Nobody ever says no to you.”

Arthur frowns, brow creasing like it annoys him to hear this. He toes at the ground. “You could, though.”

“What?”

“You could say no.”

Merlin recognizes it for what it is: an opening, an exit. A vulnerability, given like a gift, like a possible weapon. Arthur is _unsure_.

Still, it comes easily—“No,” he says. Forces himself to believe in it. “Thank you. No.”

And he pretends to not see the slight flinch in Arthur’s shoulders, thinks it must be his imagination. Because Arthur is already shrugging, saying, “Suit yourself, then,” and then speeding along the street and dropping him off in front of Gaius’s, smirking “See you tomorrow, _Merrrrr_ lin,” purring the word, already curling the car away from the curb, and Merlin rolls his eyes—acts, as usual, like it’s not a certain thing. Like he might change his mind. Like either of them could ever actually _not_.

 

\--

 

“So,” Gaius says, “you’ve got a—“

“Very persistent stalker.”

“He introduced himself as your date,” Gaius tells him.

“Uh,” Merlin says, feeling his face redden just slightly. “Yeah, it’s just. Someone from school, you know. Seriously delusional kid, follows me around in the hallways sometimes. And stuff.”

“Oh, I see. Right,” Gaius says, in that very obvious I-don’t-believe-you-in-the-slightest-but-I’ll-go-along-with-it-because-I-am-a-kind-and-patient-person-and-you-will-end-up-explaining-it-all-someday-to-me-anyway way that all adults, and especially old, white-haired uncles, seem to have perfected. 

“Yeah,” Merlin says, nodding, staring at the wall, determinedly.

 

\--

 

It goes on for a long time, this— _game_ , this dance, whatever it is, between them. Him and Arthur. Longer than he’d expected, and far, far longer than Merlin is truly comfortable with. Sometimes he thinks about it in class; feels terrible for having apparently abandoned, oh, _all of his morals_ in doing this, in letting Arthur drag him around to dark corners and giving into the lick of his smooth, wet lips without even a single protest, anymore. It falls into a vicious cycle: he’ll finally, finally work up the courage one time to hold Arthur back, say, _I’m not doing this any longer_ , but then Arthur will go and do some weirdly romantic thing when they’re alone together (only, only ever alone) like skimming his thumb slowly across Merlin’s jaw—too kind, too intimate for what they are—or leaning close and grabbing his hand under his jacket sleeve when they walk down the street, and Merlin will lose his nerve. Back down from the small twinges of conscience in his head. He feels like a liar, like a coward, but it isn’t enough to stop him from this— _addiction_ , almost. 

They have an unspoken routine at school: Merlin doesn’t look at Arthur in English, and Arthur doesn’t acknowledge him at all in front of his friends. They don’t talk to each other at all in class. Merlin sometimes nods at Arthur in the hallway, and Arthur just looks coolly back, eyes blank—and then later Arthur comes and pushes him into walls, onto benches hidden behind trees, into toilet stalls, biting all over his mouth and groaning like he’s been missing this, thinking about it _all day_. Has he been? Merlin wonders. Arthur will randomly show up at Merlin’s doorstep one or two afternoons a week, too, and stand there looking expectant until Merlin sighs and goes with him obediently to whatever posh new restaurant or suspiciously date-like thing Arthur wants to try, that day. And Arthur will maybe curl his fingers around Merlin’s thigh, mouth at the lobe of his ear in the corner a dark booth, and sigh like it’s all he’s ever, ever wanted to do. Merlin isn’t stupid—he knows all the places Arthur takes him are carefully chosen, are nowhere that anybody from school is ever likely to show up, see them together. He knows this is wrong, wrong, wrong. And somehow, it goes on. Becomes almost familiar; habitual. It goes on for weeks and stretches into multiple months, this half-relationship _thing_ that he’s gone and tangled himself in. 

Will, Freya’s-weird-conspiracy-theorist-friend-Will, is—weirdly, unexpectedly, _astonishingly_ —the first one to figure it out.

“So you’re,” Will says conversationally one day, apropos of nothing, after waving Merlin down in the corridor between third and fourth period, “sort of into guys, yeah?”

Merlin nearly chokes on his own tongue. Squeaks out, “ _What?_ ”

“That’s completely cool,” Will says, nodding.

“I’m—I—“

Merlin is sputtering in half-indignation, half-terror, and sort of looking wildly around, praying that no one in the vicinity has been listening. Thankfully, the hall is loud and crowded, everybody wrapped up in their own conversations. He clutches the strap of his bag with one tense hand, and gapes over at Will. Whose next words are actually, seriously,

“You and what’s-his-face, Arthur Pendragon, right?”

“Fuck,” Merlin mutters under his breath, wanting the floor to open up and swallow him whole, right there, right now. “For fuck’s sake, _what?_ ”

Will pats him on the back. “It’s a bit obvious, actually.”

“I don’t. . .”

“He stares at you in the hall. A lot. You don’t ever talk about girls, or even notice them. Oh and you’ve got,” Will gestures with his hand in the vague direction of Merlin’s throat, “bites on your neck.”

Merlin’s hand goes automatically to his collar, fruitlessly trying to flatten it over the fading, still-colored bruises there, face flushing a deep red. 

“Don’t worry—I won’t tell Freya,” Will says, smiling in what he probably thinks is a rather sympathetic way. “She’d be devastated, though.”

And then, after a quick glance at his watch, “Ah, I should get to class. See you at lunch, Merlin,” and Will is heading out the door to another building, leaving Merlin standing there trying to recover his normal breathing pattern, trying to make some actual sense of what has just happened.

 

\--

 

“I need to talk to you,” Merlin says, quiet.

Arthur, with his teeth skimming down Merlin’s shoulder: “Later.”

“But—“ And Merlin sidles along the wall, tries to squeeze out from under Arthur’s hands, but there’s only so much room in this dark, cramped broom closet (and yes, they are actually in a real, honest-to-god _closet_ right now; Merlin pretty much wants to die from the shame of it, which—sadly—is something he’s been wanting to do a lot, lately). “It’s kind of important.”

Arthur says, “It can _wait_ ,” with irritation creeping into his voice. His fingers press into Merlin’s hips, trapping him in the awkward space, make him stumble backwards into cardboard storage boxes, their contents rattling together noisily. 

The entire day, Merlin thinks wonderingly, has been absolutely terrible. From Will’s unsettling words this morning, to lunch, a thoroughly uncomfortable affair with Freya and all her friends—they’re Merlin’s friends, too, he supposes now, but it doesn’t stop him from being suspicious of everything. From shrinking at Vivian’s sharp-eyed gaze and sitting hunched for the entire half hour so no one can see his neck. Merlin is overly paranoid for the rest of the afternoon, jumping almost out of his skin every time someone turns to talk to him, suspicious and doubting, trying to figure out, who else—who else could know? And how much do they know? And what if they told—what if it got to the wrong people, what would happen, how much damage could this truly do? It’s just. What a fucking mess.

And now, Arthur. Who’d cornered Merlin somewhere upstairs immediately after the last bell, and had all but dragged him sideways into a (questionable, conveniently unlocked) broom closet. And Merlin had gone, of course, like the self-destructive masochist he so obviously, obviously is.

“It really can’t,” says Merlin, insistent.

Arthur makes a noise that sounds almost like a growl, but he stills, pausing with his lips a hair’s distance away from the shell of Merlin’s ear. “Fine,” he says, breathing close, “let it _out_ then.”

Merlin hesitates, now that he’s got Arthur’s attention.

“What?”

He swallows, and says, “Okay, so, my friend. I think he’s my friend, I mean; it’s more like we just know each other, but—“

Arthur shoots him a dark look that Merlin is quite familiar with by now, and it conveys exactly how much he cares for unnecessary rambling. Especially when it comes from Merlin.

“Right. Well,” Merlin clears his throat, cutting to the point, “my friend. Apparently, he kind of knows.”

And he waits.

At first, Arthur doesn’t understand. He furrows his eyebrows and still looks vaguely annoyed. Says, “Knows what?”

“ _Knows_ ,” Merlin repeats, trying to make the word significant, realized.

“O _kay_. . .”

“About. You know.” He curves his fingernails into his palm, trying to quell the strangely nervous thumping of his heart. “ _This_.” He makes sure to place a certain weight on the syllable, stretching it out for emphasis; adds a wave of his hand in the direction of Arthur’s face, and then at his own. “. . . Us?”

Arthur’s fingers on Merlin’s skin have paused, and his expression is unreadable. The only source of light in the closet is a single faint bulb strung from the ceiling by a wire, somewhere in the corner behind their heads. Its glow hits upon the crown of Arthur’s hair, turns it a brilliant gold, but leaves his eyes dark, inscrutable.

“Knows,” Arthur says finally, voice flat.

“Yeah.”

“ _Knows_.”

Merlin is prepared for a bit of anger—he’s witnessed Arthur’s easy temper, after all, and thinks he should know better. He really, really should know better. But he doesn’t at all expect this, what comes next, fast as lightning—

Which is Arthur wrenching his hands away from Merlin like he’s been _burned_ , and then bringing them back to slam Merlin into the wall, breath coming in deep, controlled drags, nails digging harshly into his shoulder blades, hissing, “Merlin. Why the _fuck_ does he know?”

“I don’t—It’s not like I told him,” Merlin says, startled. “Are you actually _blaming_ me?”

“Not at all,” Arthur retorts, sarcastic.

“I’m not the one who started this,” Merlin argues, squirming between the wall and Arthur’s grasp, feeling petty resentment quickly boil to the surface of his chest. “Do you remember? I’m not the one who’s in a _secret relationship_ because I can’t even admit to myself that I hate my life and every single thing about it.”

He shouldn’t have said that; he knows it the moment Arthur’s mouth hardens and a muscle starts to jump in his jaw.

“I thought we were quite clear on this,” Arthur bites out from behind gritted teeth, his palms pressing painfully into Merlin’s shoulders now, hard enough to ache. “On what we are, and who we are. To each other. If I knew you were going to be such a _girl_ about it, I never would have bothered in the first place.”

“No?” Merlin wants to know, reaching his hands up to shove Arthur off of his chest. “ _Really,_ Arthur?” Arthur staggers back a few steps from surprise at the force of Merlin’s movement, then narrows his eyes at Merlin, fingers clenched into ready fists, tension radiating off his body in long, livid curls. 

This isn’t what they do. 

It isn’t. They push and pull, yes, drive each other to the brink of madness—everything between them a contest of wills, a struggle, a heady competition—but it nearly always ends in Arthur’s lips on Merlin’s, Arthur’s hips pressing him down, Merlin’s fingers twisting through Arthur’s hair, smiling in spite of himself, biting down words on the tip of his tongue, words that would sound too much like giving in, like admitting defeat. They clash, and they blend madly, like watercolor paints on a rain-soaked canvas. They do a most brilliant dance, all stubborn tongues and determination, but they don’t do this: fight, openly. Confront. Talk about things too close to real. 

Merlin should be shutting up, right about now; should just back down and let it go, let it sink back down into the quiet blue depths of denial, never to be reached again. But he can’t. He wants to have this out—wants to settle it all for once, instead of keeping it festering like bacteria in the pit of his stomach, uncomfortable, unspoken.

So instead he (probably unwisely) spreads his arms out against the dusty, shelved walls, looks Arthur straight in the eye and says, “Go on, then. Hit me.”

Arthur laughs, throwing his head back. “It wouldn’t even be _fair_ , Merlin. Like punching a baby.”

“But you want to,” Merlin says, purposely goading now. “I can tell you want to. Why don’t you just do it? Aren’t you feeling so _angry?_ Poor, misunderstood Arthur, rich and spoiled and absolutely bored to pieces. Must be so hard for you, your life. Girlfriend doesn’t even know she’s been lied to all this time, that her darling boyfriend is so _abnormal_ —that he’s _gay_ —“

The first blow lands right under his ribcage, and he’s expecting it. 

The second one leaves him a little bit more winded, but he’s ready for that one, too, meeting Arthur’s fist with his arm, wincing at the hollow resonating of bones. From there, it’s simple; it’s predictable, and Merlin gives as good as he gets. This is the way it is with them, after all. They fall to the ground with an earsplitting crash, sending mops and brooms flying, slipping across the floor—Arthur’s knees jabbing at Merlin’s stomach, Merlin’s nails scraping on Arthur’s wrist. 

They push and pull as forces. Every action matched, returned with an equal and opposite reaction. It’s so _easy_ , Merlin thinks, stomping his foot onto Arthur’s arm, kicking them over onto the hard ground, trying to wrestle control—it’s just like everything else they’ve done, and it’s also not. They fight viciously, meanly, a carnal kind of instinct. 

Later, he doesn’t even remember how it stops. Only that it does; eventually, one of them accidentally slams the door open and they fall out into the hallway, gasping, sporting bruises in all shades of color. Arthur clutches his scratched and bleeding arm, glaring, rasps, “Fuck, aren’t we _done_ with this yet?”

“Yeah,” Merlin coughs, feeling a sting at the back of his eyes. “Yes. I am. _I’m_ done.”

And he _is_. So very much so. He picks himself off the floor, wincing. Walks away on shaky legs, all the way across the empty hall and down the stairs, through the doors—and doesn’t look back.

 

\--

 

“Merlin.”

The first bell of the morning rings, shrill and loud.

“Merlin?”

He turns his head to the sound, and Freya stops in her tracks mid-step to her desk, an almost-smile hovering uncertainly on her face; she blinks once, twice, and says, 

“What—er, what happened to your face?”

“Nothing,” Merlin answers quickly. “I, uh, tripped.” 

“You tripped,” Freya says, flat and utterly disbelieving. 

(“You tripped,” his uncle had said in the same completely skeptical tone, last afternoon. “Into what, a cactus?”

Gaius didn’t believe him in the slightest, but of course that was to be expected—Gaius was much too old and shrewd to fall for such feeble, far-fetched excuses. The thing is, Merlin doesn’t even think it looks that bad; he’d run his arms under the cool water of the kitchen faucet yesterday night, rubbed salve over the easing redness there. Most of the scratches are shallow, the skin not even broken. And as far as bruises go, he’s had worse, far worse: climbing and falling out of trees in Ealdor, breaking bones, being rowdy with sticks and stones in childhood, even. It makes him almost annoyed, in a childish way—that Arthur can’t even _hurt_ him properly enough to be truly satisfying; to do any real, lasting damage. There are a couple faint bruises on his chin, and a small, scratchy-red scab on his cheek, but other than that, Merlin doesn’t think it looks that bad at all.)

“Yeah,” Merlin offers her a smile. “Clumsy, you know?”

Freya just stares at him for a second, and then she drops into her desk, letting her bag fall to the floor beside it, huffing. “I can’t believe you think I’m that stupid.”

Merlin’s about to protest, but the English teacher walks into the room then, yells at everybody to quiet down; students head for their seats, the chatter slowly dying out, a few stragglers running in the door late. Their teacher takes a stack of papers from a briefcase and starts passing out graded homework. Merlin turns around in his seat when he has the chance, to face Freya, apologetically—

“I don’t think you’re—“

“I know,” Freya says, and she’s frowning. “But really, Merlin. You can tell me.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Why won’t you?” Freya leans forward, eyebrows furrowed. “Did someone,” she hesitates, “did you get into a fight with someone?”

“Something like that,” Merlin rolls his eyes.

He can hear the obvious question on the tip of her tongue— _Who?_ —and purposely evades it, giving Freya a bright, reassuring smile because she probably now thinks he’s been mugged or bullied or something equally stupid, and very firmly does not let his eyes slide past to Arthur’s (empty, very conspicuously empty) seat at the back of the class as he turns back around to face the front of the room. 

He does, however, accidentally catch the eye of someone else—Morgana. She’s watching him from a few desks over, one hand resting on the smooth tabletop, with a cool, clear green gaze, looking almost— _curious_ , somehow. Merlin looks quickly away.

The period drags slowly, time snagging. Whatever they’re supposed to be learning is utterly lost on him. When the hour finally comes to a close, picking up his notebooks and standing to leave, he feels an uncomfortable prickle of something at his shoulder; Merlin chances a glance sideways only to see long, dark hair and a disturbingly intent pair of eyes focused on him, once again. Morgana doesn’t smile, doesn’t acknowledge him—she’s never even spoken to him at school, probably had no idea he even existed—but just tilts her head, measuring, meeting his gaze. Looks straight at him and makes no move to speak. A tiny crease appears at the top of her pale forehead, but maybe Merlin’s just imagining things. 

She doesn’t know, Merlin reminds himself, pulling the thought to him almost weirdly like a blanket, like some sort of shield. Maybe she should, but—he isn’t going to be the one to do it; it’s not his problem anymore. Arthur is not his problem anymore. It’s over and done with. He just wants to forget.

“Are you coming?”

Freya nudges his side, and Merlin nods, “Yeah, yeah, of course,” shaking the weird crawling feeling on his skin off, slinging his rucksack over his arm and following her to the exit, sighing inwardly, already bracing himself for the usual promised tedium of the rest of the day.

 

\--

 

Arthur is back at school on Wednesday, and by mid-afternoon, the entire campus is absolutely buzzing with gossip.

People whisper to their friends—say, did you _see_ Arthur Pendragon today? Did you see his—? And what was that when. . .? Earlier in the hall? He looked an awful _mess_ —in class, speculate about it; descend on it furiously like vultures, and the rumors spread fast as wildfire. Everybody in the school is talking about him behind their cupped hands: about the thin, unhealed red lines on his neck, the torn skin of his fingernails, the dark bruise at the corner of his eyelid. Ordinarily—if this were anybody else, anybody at all—nobody would notice a few scrapes and scratches and nobody would even care. But this is their golden boy, their idol, their perfect center of the universe. (Was he in a fight? What was it over? Does he have family problems? Nobody’s ever really seen his father, after all, mysterious man that he is.) This is _Arthur_. Everybody draws conclusions.

They’re all hypocrites about it, of course. All the students. They revere him as the boy who can do no wrong, who can make all the girls fall at his feet with the pull of a smile; then they turn around, hungry for gossip, and tell increasingly nasty stories about Arthur’s supposedly abusive home life, about his secret double-life on the streets, about his alleged drug addiction—stupid things, absurd things that Merlin has been (trying not to listen to, but can’t help but) hearing all morning long.

“Don’t,” he warns, sliding into a seat at the regular table at lunch and seeing Vivian look up and open her mouth. “Don’t talk about it. I’ve _heard_ it all.”

“No, you haven’t,” Vivian scoffs, lip curling up disdainfully. She looks rather put out. “Honestly, the ridiculousness of it all. What are people getting so worked up over?”

“I think it’s sad,” Gwen says, the last to join the table, already catching up to the beat of the conversation. “Everybody pretends they know so much about him.”

“That’s because nobody actually _does_. All the more room for stories.” 

“Does anybody know what really happened?”

Vivian drums her fingers on the wood surface. “The main thing is: who even cares? It’s just because there hasn’t been any other remotely interesting thing in the past few weeks for anyone to sink their teeth into. This is so unimaginably trite and _boring_. I bet you the boy just tripped going down the stairs.”

At his side, Merlin feels Freya look up from her lunch, and her eyes go slightly wide.

He is all too uncomfortably aware of the faint not-quite-faded scratch on his cheek, and the cramped nervous twisting in his chest; of the disquietingly laughable ease at which two and two could be put together under only the moderately observant eye of any person who cares enough to notice it, to make—what, exactly? To make up a weird, convoluted truth that nobody could even begin to guess at, save for maybe Freya, who is sitting very still next to him, a fast kind of realization showing on her face, and across on the opposite bench, Will, whom Merlin feels he should blame for all this in the first place, but finds that he just can’t.

If culpability for this mess is the issue, after all, well—Merlin has no one to fault but himself, he knows.

“The infinitely more interesting news of the morning, I think,” Vivian is proclaiming, leaning in towards the group and raising a sharp eyebrow, when he tunes back into the conversation, “is the small, lesser-known information update about Arthur and _Morgana_.”

“Yeah?” Lancelot just looks confused, out of his depth with the gossip. “What, she broke up with him again? Does that make the third or fourth time in two months now?”

Vivian shakes her head vehemently. “Oh, no,” she says, eyes flashing with a subdued sort of excitement, “I heard them myself, arguing in the courtyard this morning. Arthur broke it off with _her_.”

There’s a silence. 

“No,” Gwen says, hushed.

“ _Yes._ Which begs the question—“

“Of why,” Gwen finishes, tilting her head. “And is it finally for real? I mean, they’ve been together for _years_.”

“It sounded real, you know? Morgana was close to tears. She was almost screaming at him, saying over and over that she knew there was somebody else. And then, the really interesting part,” Vivian’s eyes are sparkling now, “is how Arthur didn’t even _deny it_ —”

Merlin’s heart jumps a step into his throat, and he has to force the suddenly wild thrumming of it down, back into his veins. 

He doesn’t hear any more of the conversation, even as it eventually veers away into other milder, less dangerous topics; he just sits quietly through the lunch period, avoiding anyone’s questioning looks at the silence and only responding to things that are directed straight to him, like Lancelot asking what he’d gotten on the chemistry homework. When the bell rings for the start of afternoon classes, he all but bolts—flashes a grin at his friends, just long enough to be reasonably convincing, and then catches himself leaning up against the shadowed side of a large tree, later, breath stuttering, fingers pressed to his temple.

Stop, he reminds himself, _stop_. He’s done with this. It was crazy, and he doesn’t care, and it’s over. The sharp, ridged bark of the tree behind him digs into him, catching on his jacket, pressing back onto his back. 

When he opens his eyes again, Arthur is there.

“Hi,” Arthur says quietly, a cautious distance away, hands in his pockets. 

Merlin says nothing.

Arthur looks bad, yes. The rumors, for the most part, are physically accurate. Merlin hadn’t been paying attention in English this morning, focusing all of his attention on the actual lesson at hand for once; but he sees now in the sunlight all the delicate discoloration of Arthur’s fair, golden skin, the little grazes of red on his face, worse off than Merlin’s own injuries. Mainly, though, he sees—a seeping tiredness, almost exhaustion, in the hitch of Arthur’s shoulders. 

“Can I talk to you?” Arthur asks, one foot toeing at the soft, brown ground.

“Why?”

A flinch, so small it’s barely perceptible. “I want to—look, I just. Want to tell you I’m sorry. And there are other things that should. . .”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Merlin says automatically. “You don’t.”

“I want—“

“It was just _for fun, yeah?_ ”

Arthur’s mouth is open, his eyes caught between something indecipherable. “No,” he says. Almost mouths it, because the sound is more air than word, it’s so soft. “No.”

And there it is, this. A thing Merlin has only seen once before: vulnerability. A truth laid bare, stripped of any pretense.

_No, it wasn’t._

It’s easy and simple for Merlin walk away from him again, after he’s already done it. To breeze by Arthur without a second glance, leave him standing alone under the tree. It’s easy and it still feels right to step out of a thing so messy, so fragile and broken; but this time, a kind of sadness blurs in with the sharp satisfaction of leaving, of turning away. And in class later, twisting a pencil around in his fingers, he stares up at a flickering light on the ceiling, and wonders.

 

\--

 

“I think,” Merlin mumbles, muffled where his face is pressed into the cool, calm kitchen countertop, “I might have screwed something up. A lot.”

Gaius sets his newspaper slowly, warily down on the table and glances up over the tip of his glasses at Merlin. “Oh?”

“But I didn’t mean to,” Merlin continues, defensive, lifting his head to look properly at his uncle, his cheek tingling. “And, it’s just—it wasn’t my fault to begin with, but then it sort of,” he flaps his fingers through the air up and down again pointlessly, “I dunno, changed and, maybe became at least half my fault, or maybe somewhere around three-quarters, but I didn’t know how to stop it and now there’s really nothing to do because it’s over anyway, except sort of not, and it’s just—“

“Merlin,” Gaius says kindly, raising a hand to interrupt. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

He wavers; Gaius makes a point of reaching up to adjust his glasses, then folding his wrinkled hands patiently on the tabletop, and peering attentively up at Merlin, clearly waiting.

Finally, after chewing on his bottom lip for a reluctant minute, Merlin says, “There is this—person.”

“Mhm.”

“That I met at school. A while ago.”

“Yes?” 

“And h—they’re not really my friend,” Merlin says, forming the words carefully in his mouth before letting them off his tongue, “I don’t think. I guess I knew all along, all the while, but I never really registered it. Or cared, or something. But from the beginning, they didn’t want to _know_ me, or get along with me. They only wanted. . .”

He trails off uselessly, fighting down a hard red flush to his cheeks, and firmly not looking his uncle in the eye. There’s something sticky stuck to a corner of the otherwise glossy counter, and Merlin focuses his gaze down on it, picking at the edge with a slightly dirt-encrusted fingernail.

“Tutoring,” Gaius suggests then, helpful. “Let’s say, they really only wanted your help on their homework.”

“Yes,” Merlin agrees, grasping onto the idea with relief. “Um, yeah. Homework help. Sometimes it would seem like they maybe geniunely liked me—“ and he’s reminded suddenly of Arthur’s bright teeth scraping at the shell of his ear, saying, _I_ like _you, Merlin, god knows why,_ and of Arthur’s shivering-hot breath on his neck, always leaning unnecessarily close whenever speaking—stupid, stupid, stupid, crazy, “but the rest of the time, whenever anyone else was around, they just pretended like I didn’t exist. Like they didn’t know me at all, like they only ever wanted me around for,” and he stumbles again, but Gaius picks up smoothly with,

“Your academic tutelage, yes, of course.” He looks far too shrewd and already somehow _knowing_ , despite Merlin not having given away a single thing. 

“Er, yeah.”

“Why do you think this was?”

“They’re a coward,” Merlin answers immediately. “They’re too ashamed of what people might think, of what they might do, to ever admit the truth about themselves, and that makes them pathetic, and—and spineless—“

“No,” Gaius says, voice gentle, yet serious. He takes off his glasses, sets them on the table with a sigh, piercing Merlin with a clear stare. “No, Merlin. It only makes them scared.”

 

\--

 

He thinks it over, later that night. Pulls a pillow across his lap and sits cross-legged on the bed, staring out at the stripes of moonlight on his elbows, his arms. Half of him wants to hate Arthur—for dragging him into this, for making him _invest_ so much in something that was supposed to be light and careless—but that isn’t completely true, Merlin realizes with something of a small jolt, a shiver like electricity running down his spine. For all of Arthur’s attempts at casual indifference, this thing between them _never_ managed to be as offhand as it should have. And maybe Gaius is right; maybe Arthur is terrified out of his wits; Merlin doesn’t know. In the end he can’t bring himself to make any sort of judgment at all, and he ends up staring mindlessly out the window for a good couple of dark, quiet hours, before chancing a look at the bedside clock and seeing it’s already morning, almost time to get ready for school. He tugs on his clothes without much thought, blinking drowsiness out behind his eyelids, and heads out the door.

 

\--

 

The morning at school is—awkward. Stilted.

Between yawning behind his hands and struggling to just stay awake, Merlin is very aware of Freya’s sudden weirdness towards him. She does a little barely-glance-and-half-wave at him when she walks in, but then takes her seat in silence, and Merlin spends the entirety of the class in vague discomfort, thinking that her eyes are on the back of his neck and reaching up to rub at the skin there again and again, prickly and self-conscious. When the bell sounds and they all rise to leave the room, he places a hesitant hand on her shoulder amidst all the flurry of desks scraping and clears his throat. Says, for lack of anything better,

“Um, hey. Is everything all right?”

Freya blinks and answers, “Of course, why wouldn’t it be,” so smoothly he almost believes her, almost, except for the way she won’t look him directly in the eye.

Merlin feels like the biggest prat in the world, going, “Oh—yeah, that’s good,” all false and cheery like he _doesn’t know_. Like she doesn’t know. Like _he_ doesn’t know _she_ knows. It’s kind of an insult to Freya’s intelligence, pretending that everything is good and normal. But he doesn’t know what else to say; it’s not like he can just start off with _By the way, yeah, you’ve maybe kind of figured out that Arthur Pendragon—you know, that one guy sitting right over there, hard to miss, the one you and your friends are all in love with—and I had some kind of messed-up mutually destructive non-relationship going on that I never told you about. It doesn’t bother you too much, does it?_ So he just sticks to a pleasant and easygoing kind of grin, which fades when Freya doesn’t return it. 

“You could have told me, you know,” she says quietly. Like she heard exactly what he was just thinking. “I would have understood.”

Merlin doesn’t know how to respond, so he settles on a horribly fake, “Er, told you what?”

He’s never been that much of a liar.

Freya studies him for a moment, a second of something—regret, or hurt—flashing across her face. “I have to go,” she says then, abrupt, ignoring his question. “Have to hand in an assignment. See you later, all right?”

She doesn’t wait for his answer before turning and breezing through the door, leaving Merlin with somewhat belated guilt sinking into the pit of his stomach.

He can’t concentrate on anything in the rest of his morning courses, thoughts scattered all over the place. Gwen has to lean over and poke him in the side with a (very sharp) pencil in maths when their teacher calls on him for an answer to a problem from the homework—that he didn’t do—and Merlin jumps a bit in his chair, then realizes that everybody in the room is looking at him. He makes up a random number from the top of his head and says it aloud, ignoring Gwen’s stare and the teacher’s raised eyebrows, and then promptly tunes out again as someone else is called on to give the correct answer and explanation. Merlin drifts semi-consciously through the first half of the day, mind preoccupied and dazed from lack of sleep; he keeps thinking of what Gaius had said last night, and of Freya’s betrayed expression this morning. And also, suddenly, of his mother, realizing how much he misses her, how much he wishes she were here with him in London right now to tell him what to _do_.

And of Arthur, of course. Always Arthur.

Freya takes a seat next to Merlin in the courtyard at the usual table for lunch, though for a while he’s sure she’s going to turn away and avoid him for the rest of the day. She seems to have made up her mind about something, though, because immediately upon sitting down, she turns toward him determinedly, ignoring whatever other conversations Will and Gwen and Lancelot and Vivian are having, and takes a deep breath, and starts,

“Arthur Pendragon—“

“Please,” Merlin sighs, “please, Freya, I really, really do not want to talk about it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—“

“Merlin—“

“But honestly, there isn’t even much to tell. He’s—“

“—walking toward us _right now_ ,” Freya whispers frantically, eyes focused on something farther away and slightly to the left of Merlin’s face. 

He spins around so fast that his neck gives an audible little crack, but he barely feels it at all, under the sudden hitch in his throat and rapid-fire thudding of his heart in his ears. 

“Hello,” Arthur says politely, strolling up. 

The table goes very, very quiet. Arthur stands casually at the side of it for a few moments in all his usual effortless, windswept glory, looking cool and entirely unconcerned at the silence, until Gwen gives a little start and manages to remember her manners enough to return his greeting with a rather oddly-pitched, “. . . Hi?”

“Mind if I sit here?”

Arthur doesn’t wait for a response before pushing his bag off his shoulder to the grass, and dropping easily into the seat on the bench next to Merlin.

Vivian _gawks_.

Will is the one to finally clear his throat after twenty torturous seconds of silence and make an attempt to launch back into normal conversation; and everybody else eagerly picks it up like there’d been no interruption, like it’s a perfectly acceptable thing in the school’s social hierarchy for Arthur to just _show up_ here. They talk loudly, desperate to smooth over the awkwardness, though their eyes keep flickering back to Arthur in obvious confusion. 

“What,” Merlin hisses under his breath when no one’s listening, “do you think you’re _doing?_ ”

“I want to talk to you,” Arthur says simply, not bothering to keep his voice low.

“Here?”

“You walked away from me when I tried yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Merlin agrees. “Maybe there was, I dunno, a _reason_ for that. Did you ever think of that? I don’t want to talk to _you_ , so why don’t you just go and—“ 

“Please,” Arthur says, catching his gaze and holding it, clear and steady.

Merlin blinks rapidly and has to look away. 

Arthur says it again—that word, small and meaningless, really—but it sounds like more of a question this time, more of an uncertainty, and he accompanies it with a subtle, tiny shift of his body so that the fingers of his right hand rest on the inside curve of Merlin’s wrist where it’s propped against the bench, the touch warm and known and familiar, yet different from any way it’s felt before.

“People can see,” Merlin mumbles.

And Arthur turns, then, to face Merlin directly. “So?” 

The way he asks that, it’s defiant; bold, but purposeful, like he’s been gathering up the nerve to say it for a long time.

“So they’ll think. . .” 

But Merlin trails off, whatever he was planning to say completely aborted, because Arthur has removed his hand from his wrist, lifted it, and brought it up to trace lightly down the curving still-unhealed scratch on Merlin’s cheek, eyes intent and fingers calm, smooth and wordlessly apologetic against Merlin’s flushed skin, more gentle than clouds, than air, than anything in the world.

And, okay, shit—now there’s really this huge unnatural silence that rings loudly around the table, and everybody is staring unabashedly at them. At how scarily near Arthur is leaning, and how Merlin cannot bring himself to pull away.

Merlin’s pulse is pounding.

Maybe Arthur can feel it too, or maybe his is the same way. A faint smile rises to his lips and he ducks in even closer, mouth _just_ brushing against the tip of his ear, and his voice is steady save for the slight tremor that Merlin only hears because he’s listening specifically for it, perhaps hoping, wishing—when Arthur breathes out a rickety laugh and says, “So people will think things. Let them, yeah?”

Merlin must be crazy. Of course. That’s been a solid fact from the beginning. He can’t find any other reason for why he’s nodding and letting Arthur get even closer, distantly aware of how other people have stopped in their tracks in the courtyard and are now turned toward their table, eyes curious and some with comically dropped jaws, as they watch as—

Arthur wraps a hand into the back of Merlin’s hair, tells him, nervous but fiercely, “If it’s all right with you, I mean, because I—I just don’t _care_ ,” and pulls him in for a long, shaky kiss, right then, right there, outside in the middle of the entire school, and Merlin thinks his heart must stop for at _least a minute._

The press of Arthur’s mouth against his is comforting in a way that it really shouldn’t be. His lips are dry, chapped, and his fingertips are near trembling from where they rest still tangled in Merlin’s hair, but. But it’s. It’s _him_ , right? It’s Arthur, being arrogant and infuriating as always, and this, the steady brush of his skin across Merlin’s—Merlin can understand it, weirdly, madly, as the only way he can possibly apologize. 

Though, he shouldn’t know what Arthur is like. Because they aren’t _friends_ , after all. He shouldn’t be able to map out Arthur’s personality, or pinpoint tiny changes in his mood, or distinguish between the crinkly-eyed smile and the slow, genuinely pleased one; or feel the tension in his kiss, now, feel the quaking terror there behind the determination. But it’s a stupid point, because he can, and he _does_ , so maybe he’s subconsciously registered everything anyway; maybe he’s been cataloging every bit of Arthur along the way and accidently fitting the puzzle pieces together to make an actual image, something bright and new and ever-so-surprising, like a secret of the deepest kind; something undiscovered. Something real.

And he also understands that this is _it_ , right here. This is Arthur, handing a part of himself willingly over to Merlin with a sweep across his bottom lip, a careful hand curled on Merlin’s neck, while half the school is standing there and gaping at them, one or two people no doubt already sneaking camera phones out of their pockets and sending quick pictures to every single one of their friends (who can surely be trusted to ensure that this news reaches all the students in the year by the end of the day) with captions that read _You are not going to believe this_ and _Arthur Pendragon is kissing a boy_ and _Holy fucking_ shit—

So.

“Okay,” is the first thing Merlin manages to say when he eventually pulls away, breath a little wild and uneven, air coming in a hot rush against Arthur’s face. His voice feels raspy. “Okay. All right. You wanted to talk. So talk.”

Arthur bends his head low, close. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean,” Merlin lets out a dry laugh, “was that—was that to get my attention? Because, okay. Pretty sure you made your point there.” He chances a quick look around, and then immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

At least twenty or so people are hovering in the vicinity of the table, unabashedly eavesdropping without even any pretended excuse to be there. Someone makes a tiny, strangled noise their throat—it’s Gwen, sitting inches away, and Vivian quickly elbows her in the arm; they meet Merlin’s gaze for a wide-eyed moment, and then flush matching shades of red. Will looks amused, while Lancelot seems mildly bewildered. But Freya is the one to look Merlin in the eye and offer a tiny, hesitant nod. She glares up at the surrounding students and mutters, “For god’s _sake_ , what are you all staring at?” with surprising strength, and they have the grace to at least flinch and step back a few feet, and gradually disperse back into the crowd.

Arthur isn’t watching; he’s deliberately focused on a point at Merlin’s shoulder, shadows of eyelashes fanning down across his cheeks as blinks.

And he says: “Go out with me.”

“. . . What?”

“Properly, I mean,” Arthur clarifies, lips twisting up into a rueful sort of smile. His eyes flicker up to Merlin’s and then back down to the sleeve of his shirt, when he mumbles, “That is. If you want to.”

Merlin bets that the words feel awkward on his tongue, unused as Arthur is to asking for anything in his life. And before he realizes he’s opened his mouth, he asks with just the tiniest hint of sarcasm— “Do I actually get a choice, this time?” And then clamps down his jaw, muttering, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“Yeah. I’m sure.” Arthur rolls his eyes but there’s something still troubled there, in his expression. And he answers, “Of course you have a choice, Merlin,” almost unbearably gently.

A beat passes. Merlin feels a nudge at his side. He turns to see Freya, who huffs out a breath and whispers, “Really now. Say yes, you _idiot_.” 

“You don’t even know the whole story,” Merlin tries to counter, a bit nonplussed at her newfound audacity. “It’s. It’s just.”

“Complicated?” Freya asks, her gaze bright and knowing.

“Mad.”

“As in, infuriating?”

“More like insane.”

“The unbelievable kind?”

“The crazy, lunatic kind.”

“But not complicated, then.”

“It’s. . .” He turns back to Arthur then, who’s been sitting there listening with his head tilted curiously. “It _is._ Complicated. Isn’t it?”

“You seem to be the only one who thinks so,” Arthur tells him.

“But,” Merlin argues, absurdly bent on finding some rationale for all his frustration the past few days, some reason behind all the insomnia and inexplicable twists in his chest that would otherwise be for nothing, “What about everything? What about your girlfriend?”

“Ex,” Arthur corrects. 

That gets him the raise of a skeptical eyebrow. “Right.”

“It’s over, Merlin. In all honestly, it has been for a while now.”

“Since when?”

“Since I kissed you, months ago, that first time,” Arthur answers, open and earnest, and they both ignore the small, involuntary gasp of breath that comes from Gwen, across the table. 

Merlin shakes his head and asks, more quietly, “What about everything else?”

“Like I said. I don’t care.”

“How can you just not _care_? You cared last week when—“

“I know,” Arthur says, urgently now, sucking in a long breath and then letting the words all roll off the end of it in one go. “I know. But I realized, I really don’t. I shouldn’t ever have, anyway, and then after all of this, I just didn’t anymore. You were right, all right? You were right. I was lying to myself, I was lying to Morgana and everyone else and you—I never meant to drag you so far into it, believe me. I was an idiot. I thought I could have, you know, _this_ , just as a thing all by itself, and that it’d be okay because you were completely new here and would never dare to tell anyone and neither of us would ever get _invested_ in it because how lame would that be—“ He has to pause to draw another inhale, and he’s looking at something just to the left of Merlin’s eyes, meeting them for a moment and darting back away, continues, “—you know? How stupid would it be that I ended up falling for the one person I—“

He skids to a stop mid-word, mouth snapping shut, and Merlin’s voice is a near-squeak when he asks in the resulting pin-drop silence, “Did you just. Wait. Say that again. You ended up _what_?”

Arthur clears his throat, looking uncomfortable. Goes on: “I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t really ask you to forgive me, I know, but I’m sorry anyway. It’s like you said, that day in my car. About people who don’t really know who I am. Everything, all of that—it wasn’t what I wanted at all.”

He blows out a sigh and waits.

“And what _do_ you want,” Merlin says cautiously. 

In answer, Arthur just leans an elbow on the surface of the table, propping himself up closer to Merlin, so that his face is level with Merlin’s neck and he bends in, lips curved in the hint of a smile, but otherwise serious. “This,” he says simply. “You, maybe.”

“’Maybe’,” Merlin repeats. “Wow, okay, that sounds promising.”

“You know what I _mean_ ,” Arthur scoffs, biting his cheek like he’s trying to keep from laughing a little.

And Merlin does know, is the thing. He knows all of these little things about Arthur, and so when Arthur tugs on the bottom of his sleeve like a little kid and insists, “So I know, I _know_ I’ve been an arse. But come on, please, let’s try this, let me take you on a real date sometime,” it doesn’t really take Freya’s second nudge in his ribs or Vivian’s not-so-hushed whisper to Gwen of, “God, look at them, look, they are just _adorable_ ,” for him to sigh in defeat—it’s been a long time coming, or something—and say,

“Yeah, fine. All right? _Fine._ ”

Arthur’s answering grin is brighter and more beautiful than the sun, hanging high in the clouds above their heads.

 

\--

 

In all honesty, if you asked him later— Merlin still couldn’t quite tell you exactly how he gets here. How this happens.

London, yes, leaving his small hometown to live with his Uncle Gaius, to taste a bit of city life and go to school here, maybe find somewhere to go to university, eventually; that part’s all clear. He remembers the train ride, the fierce longing in his chest that first night months and months ago, missing his mum and the rolling green hills of his childhood home. He remembers walking to school the first day here, losing his way between the twisting layout of the buildings, accidentally stumbling into a bathroom somewhere, sometime— 

It’s where Arthur is concerned, that things begin to get a bit blurry.

Because _here_ here, that’s what still makes Merlin dizzy; how everything’s changed so much, so quickly. _Here_ is in the hall some days now, when Merlin walks to class with Freya or Will or Gwen, talking about nothing in particular, and Arthur will breeze up, tuck his hand into Merlin’s pocket and kiss his neck softly in the open, casual as anything, and say, “Morning,” and join them, ambling down the corridor. _Here_ is at Merlin’s after school, mid-lazy afternoon when Gaius is not yet home from work and Arthur throws himself down on the living room sofa, complaining loudly about how utterly _bored_ he is and Merlin will have to roll his eyes and toss a pillow or a long, wet kiss at him just to shut him up. _Here_ is English first period, how Arthur throws him fist-crumpled notes across the room that say frankly the most pointless things (“Your socks don’t match today,” or, “I am about to fall asleep in roughly ten seconds,” or, “That stain on the ceiling above the chalkboard looks like a seahorse”) until Merlin asks one day in exasperation why he doesn’t just _sit_ next to Merlin if he’s so bent on telling him every inane thought that ever pops into his head—and one day Arthur does, just comes into the classroom and dumps his pencils in the seat next to Merlin’s, smirking and ignoring the protests of his friends, who linger uncertainly in the back row without him.

It’s not perfect. Oh, not anything close to perfect. Of course not. Merlin is relatively new to this whole boyfriends-with-a-boy-and-especially-Arthur thing, and Arthur is still a right prat some days, and a small part of the student population still gives them _looks_ when they lean their heads together in the hallway, like they’re weird and different and don’t belong here. But just a small part. Freya and her friends don’t care; they coo over Arthur when he sits with them at lunch, in fact, and Vivian practically swoons whenever Arthur so much as touches Merlin on the hand. Even Morgana—Morgana whom Merlin is at first irrationally afraid of, for a few weeks after the initial kiss-in-the-courtyard ordeal—is able to give them a small, understanding nod when she passes by them together. 

It’s still a bit odd, and cautious, and scary if only because it’s new. But Merlin doesn’t mind. Not when Arthur’s got his fingers weaving through Merlin’s hair, lips pressed into the hollow of Merlin’s throat, murmuring nonsense that’s sweet and kind of sappy and sure material for Merlin to tease him about in the future. Not when he can’t hold back his own demented smile as Arthur leans up to lick his mouth, whisper something about—an empty toilet downstairs, after class later, yeah? How about it, Merlin?

Yes, Merlin thinks. Yeah. For the most part, it’s all right.

[END.]


End file.
